Dietary Rhus coriaria L. powder reduces the blood cholesterol, VLDL-c and glucose, but increases abdominal fat in broilers

In an experiment, 200 one-day-old broiler chickens (Ross 308) were used to investigate the effects of sumac fruit (Rhus coriaria L.) powder (SFP) on performance, plasma concentrations of total cholesterol (TC), triglyceride (TG), high density lipoprotein (HDL-c), low density lipoprotein (LDL-c), very low density lipoprotein (VLDL-c) and plasma fasting blood sugar (FBS), as well as proportional abdominal fat. The chicks were divided into four treatment groups with 5 replicates and 10 birds in each. The birds were fed the basal diet (Z-SFP) or diets supplemented with 2.5 g SFP (L-SFP), 5 g SFP (M-SFP) and 10 g SFP (H-SFP) per kg diet. During the whole experimental period the H-SFP birds had a higher feed intake than the Z-SFP and L-SFP birds, though the H-SFP birds had higher feed conversion ratio compared with birds in the other treatments. No significant differences for body weight gain were recorded between the treatments. The M-SFP and H-SFP birds had lower plasma TC and VLDL-c concentrations than the Z-SFP and L-SFP birds. No significant differences between the treatments were indicated for plasma TG, HDL-c and LDL-c concentrations. Moreover the plasma FBS concentration of the H-SFP birds was lower than the birds in treatments Z-SFP and L-SFP, but no significant differences were observed between the other treatments. Furthermore, significant negative correlations were found between SFP supplementation and plasma TC, VLDL-c and FBS concentrations and a significant positive correlation between SFP supplementation and abdominal fat weight. In conclusion, dietary supplementation of SFP reduces the blood TC, VLDL-c and FBS concentrations, which can be related to decreased activity of HMG-CoA reductase and α-amylase activities. The higher abdominal fat weight of the SFP-fed birds is possibly related to changes of energy storage towards fat deposition.Keywords: Fasting blood sugar, feed conversion ratio, feed intake, performance, sumac frui

Engineering thermostable enzymes; application of unsupervised clustering algorithms

There is a high demand for engineering thermostable enzymes in some industries; especially in paper industries to use environmental friendly enzymes instead of toxic chlorine chemicals. Hence, understanding protein attributes involved in enzyme thermostability is important. Herein, the most important protein features contributing to enzyme thermostability was searched by using data mining algorithms. Combination of attribute weighting and unsupervised clustering algorithms were used to explore protein attributes which play major roles in thermostability. The results showed that expectation maximization clustering with uncertainly and correlation attribute weighting algorithms can effectively (100%) classify thermo- and meso-stable proteins. Gln content and frequency of hydrophilic residues were the most important protein features selected by 70% of weighing methods. The findings of this research provide the required knowledge for engineering thermostable enzymes in laboratory.Amir Lakizadeh, Parisa Agha-Golzadeh, Mansour Ebrahimi, Esmaeil Ebrahimie and Mahdi Ebrahimihttp://www.m-hikari.com/asb/asb2011/asb1-4-2011