Characterization of circulating microRNA profiles of postpartum dairy cows with persistent subclinical endometritis

Subclinical endometritis (SCE) is an unresolved in-flammation of the endometrium of postpartum dairy cows, seriously affecting fertility. Current diagnosis, which relies on uterine cytology or even more invasive biopsy sampling, would benefit from the identifica-tion of blood-based diagnostic biomarkers. Due to the known role of microRNAs (miRNAs) in other diseases, this case-control study evaluated the cell-free circulat-ing miRNA profiles of SCE cows, and the network transcripts predicted to interact with those miRNAs, previously identified as differentially expressed genes (DEG) in the endometrium of the same cows. Healthy (H, n = 6) and persistent SCE (n = 11) cows character-ized by endometrial cytology and biopsy were blood sampled at 21 and 44 d postpartum (DPP). Following extraction of cell-free plasma miRNAs and RNA-seq analysis, differential abundance analysis of miRNAs was performed with the DESeq2 R package (adjusted p-value of 0.05), and in silico prediction of miRNA-interacting genes on a sequence complementary basis was conducted using the miRWalk database. The principal component analysis showed a clear cluster-ing between groups of uterine health phenotypes (H vs. SCE), although the clustering between groups was less pronounced at 44 DPP than at 21 DPP. No effect the stage (21 vs. 44 DPP) was observed. A total of 799 known circulating miRNAs were identified, from which 34 demonstrated differential abundance between H and SCE cows (12 less abundant and 22 more abundant SCE than in H cows). These 34 miRNAs are predicted to interact with 10,104 transcripts, among which 43, 81, and 147 were previously identified as differentially expressed in, respectively, endometrial luminal epithe- lial, glandular epithelial, and stromal cells of the same cows. This accounts for approximately half of the DEG identified between those H and SCE cows, including genes involved in endometrial cell proliferation, angio- genesis and immune response, whose dysregulation in SCE cows may impair pregnancy establishment. From 219 miRNAs with mean normalized read counts above 100, the presence and abundance of miR-425-3p and miR-2285z had the highest discriminatory level to dif- ferentiate SCE from H cows. In conclusion, despite ap- parent confinement to the endometrium, SCE is associ- ated with a distinct circulating miRNA profile, which may represent a link between the systemic changes associated with disease and the endometrial immune response. The validation of a miRNA panel consist- ing of circulating cell-free miR-425-3p and miR-2285z may prove a relevant advancement for the noninvasive diagnosis of persistent SCE

Bacterial diversity in semen from stallions in three European countries evaluated by 16S sequencing

The microbiome plays a significant role in shaping the health and functioning of the systems it inhabits. The seminal microbiome of stallions has implications for the health of the reproductive tract, sperm quality during preservation and antibiotic use in semen extenders. Diverse bacteria are present on the external genital tract and a mix of commensal microorganisms populates various parts of the reproductive tract, influencing the seminal bacterial content. Other sources of bacteria include the environment, semen collection equipment, and personnel. The bacterial load can adversely affect sperm quality and fertility, particularly in artificial insemination, where semen is extended and stored before use. Antibiotics are frequently used to inhibit bacterial growth, but their effectiveness varies depending on the bacterial strains present. The aim of this study was to assess the bacterial diversity in semen from 37 healthy stallions across three European nations (Germany, Portugal, and Sweden) using 16S sequencing. Semen samples were collected from individual stallions at three AI centers; DNA extraction, sequencing, and bioinformatic analysis were performed. Differences in bacterial diversity among the stallions were seen; although bacterial phyla were shared across the regions, differences were observed at the genus level. Climate, husbandry practices, and individual variability likely contribute to these differences. These findings underscore the importance of tailoring antibiotic strategies for semen preservation based on regional bacterial profiles. The study presents a comprehensive approach to understanding the intricacies of the stallion seminal microbiome and its potential implications for reproductive technologies and animal health

Differentially Private Approval-Based Committee Voting

In this paper, we investigate tradeoffs between differential privacy (DP) and several voting axioms for approval-based committee voting, including proportionality, Pareto efficiency, Condorcet criterion, and strategyproofness. For all the axioms except strategyproofness, we show their incompatibility with DP, and provide both upper and lower bounds for their tradeoffs with DP. Furthermore, we show that any $\epsilon$-DP mechanism satisfies $e^{-\epsilon}$-cardinality strategyproofness, and the satisfaction can be further improved if the mechanism satisfies monotonicity

Favoring Eagerness for Remaining Items: Designing Efficient, Fair, and Strategyproof Mechanisms

In the assignment problem, the goal is to assign indivisible items to agents who have ordinal preferences, efficiently and fairly, in a strategyproof manner. In practice, first-choice maximality, i.e., assigning a maximal number of agents their top items, is often identified as an important efficiency criterion and measure of agents' satisfaction. In this paper, we propose a natural and intuitive efficiency property, favoring-eagerness-for-remaining-items (FERI), which requires that each item is allocated to an agent who ranks it highest among remaining items, thereby implying first-choice maximality. Using FERI as a heuristic, we design mechanisms that satisfy ex-post or ex-ante variants of FERI together with combinations of other desirable properties of efficiency (Pareto-efficiency), fairness (strong equal treatment of equals and sd-weak-envy-freeness), and strategyproofness (sd-weak-strategyproofness). We also explore the limits of FERI mechanisms in providing stronger efficiency, fairness, or strategyproofness guarantees through impossibility results

Gene Networks and Pathways Involved in LPS-Induced Proliferative Response of Bovine Endometrial Epithelial Cells

Lipopolysaccharide (LPS) is a component of the outer membrane of Gram-negative bacteria involved in the pathogenic processes leading to mastitis and metritis in animals such as dairy cattle. LPS causes cell proliferation associated with endometrium inflammation. Former in vitro studies have demonstrated that LPS induces an intense stimulation of the proliferation of a pure population of bovine endometrial epithelial cells. In a follow-up transcriptomic study based on RNA-sequencing data obtained after 24 h exposure of primary bovine endometrial epithelial cells to 0, 2, and 8 mu g/mL LPS, 752 and 727 differentially expressed genes (DEGs) were detected between the controls and LPS-treated samples that encode proteins known to be associated with either proliferation or apoptosis, respectively. The present bioinformatic analysis was performed to decipher the gene networks involved to obtain a deeper understanding of the mechanisms underlying the proliferative and apoptosis processes. Our findings have revealed 116 putative transcription factors (TFs) and the most significant number of interactions between these TFs and DEGs belong to NFK beta 1, TP53, STAT1, and HIF1A. Moreover, our results provide novel insights into the early signaling and metabolic pathways in bovine endometrial epithelial cells associated with the innate immune response and cell proliferation to Escherichia coli-LPS infection. The results further indicated that LPS challenge elicited a strong transcriptomic response, leading to potent activation of pro-inflammatory pathways that are associated with a marked endometrial cancer, Toll-like receptor, NFK beta, AKT, apoptosis, and MAPK signaling pathways. This effect may provide a mechanistic explanation for the relationship between LPS and cell proliferation

Proteomic and Lipidomic Profiling of Calves Experimentally Co-Infected with Influenza D Virus and Mycoplasma bovis: Insights into the Host-Pathogen Interactions

The role of Influenza D virus (IDV) in bovine respiratory disease remains unclear. An in vivo experiment resulted in increased clinical signs, lesions, and pathogen replication in calves co-infected with IDV and Mycoplasma bovis (M. bovis), compared to single-infected calves. The present study aimed to elucidate the host-pathogen interactions and profile the kinetics of lipid mediators in the airways of these calves. Bronchoalveolar lavage (BAL) samples collected at 2 days post-infection (dpi) were used for proteomic analyses by liquid chromatography-tandem mass spectrometry (LC-MS/MS). Additionally, lipidomic analyses were performed by LC-MS/MS on BAL samples collected at 2, 7 and 14 dpi. Whereas M. bovis induced the expression of proteins involved in fibrin formation, IDV co-infection counteracted this coagulation mechanism and downregulated other acute-phase response proteins, such as complement component 4 (C4) and plasminogen (PLG). The reduced inflammatory response against M. bovis likely resulted in increased M. bovis replication and delayed M. bovis clearance, which led to a significantly increased abundance of oxylipids in co-infected calves. The identified induced oxylipids mainly derived from arachidonic acid; were likely oxidized by COX-1, COX-2, and LOX-5; and peaked at 7 dpi. This paper presents the first characterization of BAL proteome and lipid mediator kinetics in response to IDV and M. bovis infection in cattle and raises hypotheses regarding how IDV acts as a co-pathogen in bovine respiratory disease

Multi-type Resource Allocation with Partial Preferences

We propose multi-type probabilistic serial (MPS) and multi-type random priority (MRP) as extensions of the well known PS and RP mechanisms to the multi-type resource allocation problem (MTRA) with partial preferences. In our setting, there are multiple types of divisible items, and a group of agents who have partial order preferences over bundles consisting of one item of each type. We show that for the unrestricted domain of partial order preferences, no mechanism satisfies both sd-efficiency and sd-envy-freeness. Notwithstanding this impossibility result, our main message is positive: When agents' preferences are represented by acyclic CP-nets, MPS satisfies sd-efficiency, sd-envy-freeness, ordinal fairness, and upper invariance, while MRP satisfies ex-post-efficiency, sd-strategy-proofness, and upper invariance, recovering the properties of PS and RP

Upregulation of tetraspanin 8 may contribute to LPSinduced acute lung injury by activation of the MAPK and NF-κB pathways

Purpose: To investigate the effect of tetraspanin8 (Tspan8, also known as TM4SF3 or CO-029) on lipopolysaccharide (LPS)-induced acute lung injury (ALI) and the related signaling pathways.Methods: Treatment with LPS was used to induce lung damage in mice and a lung epithelial cell line. The wet-to-dry weight ratio of lung tissue, hematoxylin and eosin (H&E) staining, and quantification of cytokine concentrations were conducted to validate the model. Enzyme-linked immunosorbent assays (ELISA) and quantitative polymerase chain reaction (qPCR) were used to measure levels of tumor necrosis factor alpha, interleukin (IL)-1β, and IL-6. Tspan8 levels were knocked down using shRNAs. Mitogen-activated protein kinase (MAPK) and nuclear factor kappa B (NF-κB) pathway levels were assessed after LPS-induced injury in this cellular model.Results: Levels of Tspan8 were upregulated in the LPS-induced ALI model. Additionally, LPS treatment of mouse lung epithelial cells resulted in Tspan8 upregulation. Tspan8 knockdown alleviated the effects of LPS on lung epithelial injury by inhibiting the upregulation of MAPK and NF-κB signaling pathways.Conclusion: The upregulation of Tspan8 may promote the progression of ALI

Detection and Removal of Noise in Images Based on Amount of Knowledge Associated with Intuitionistic Fuzzy Sets

In response to the shortcomings of existing image noise detection algorithms that rely on the flawed intuitionistic fuzzy entropy (IFE) theory, a method of image noise detection and removal based on intuitionistic fuzzy amount of knowledge (IFAK) is proposed by introducing the latest knowledge measure (KM) theory and model. In the noise detection stage, the optimal average intensity of the noisy image foreground and background is determined based on the maximum IFAK, and the parametric model of noise detection is constructed accordingly to mark the probability of noise pixels and suspected noise pixels, showing excellent performance of noise detection. In the noise removal stage, a denoising model based on IFAK and probability of noise pixels is proposed by using the noise probability matrix, which can not only effectively denoise, but also better protect the characteristics of image edges and non-noise extreme pixels. Comparative experiments are carried out on standard datasets and classical test images, respectively. Experimental results show that the proposed method can accurately identify the image impulse noise and effectively realize image denoising. The overall performance outperforms other similar algorithms. The key metrics PSNR and SSIM are increased by 14.81% and 11.35%, respectively. In this paper, the latest KM theory is applied to image denoising, and excellent evaluation metrics and visual effects are obtained, while innovative applications of this theory in other related fields are also achieved