Association between milk protein polymorphism and milk production traits in Black and White dairy cattle in Turkey

Milk protein polymorphism such as as1-casein (as1-Cn), b-lactoglobulin (b-Lg), b-casein (b-Cn) and k-casein (k-Cn) of Black and White dairy cattle were investigated in this study. The genetic structure of herd was examined for these loci. At the sametime the relationships between milk protein types and some milk production traits were determined. Milk production traits were chosen as milk yield, average daily milk yield and lactation length. These traits were associated with milk protein types. Genetic variants of milk protein were identified by starch gel electrophoresis containing mercaptoethanol and urea. The allele gene frequencies of A, B, and C of as1-Cn loci and A, B of b-Cn were found to be 0.01; 0.97; 0.02 and 0.95; 0.05 respectively. Furthermore, the allele frequencies of A, B of k-Cn and A, B of b-Lg were found to be 0.68; 0.32 and 0.55; 0.45 respectively. For as1-Cn BB phenotype was found to havehigher milk yield than those of as1-Cn AB and as1-Cn BC phenotypes, and b-Lg AA phenotype was detected to have higher milk yield than those of b-Lg AB and b-Lg BB types but were not statistically important. It was concluded that the genetic structure of the four loci were determined in Black and White cattle, but there was no significant association between the milk protein types and milk production traits in the study.Key words: Milk protein polymorphism, casein, lactoglobulin, Black and White dairy cattle

Erythrocyte potassium and glutathione polymorphism determination in Saanen x Malta crossbred goats

This research is aimed at determining the erythrocyte potassium and glutathione polymorphisms and also to identify the relationship among the various blood parameters in  Saanen x Malta crossbred goat raised in Turkey. The allele gene frequencies of KH and KL associated with the potassium concentration were calculated as 0.94 and 0.06, respectively. The differences between the mean values of low and high potassium concentrations in erythrocyte were statistically significant (P < 0.01). In addition, there were some significant relationships between erythrocyte potassium types and some blood parameters such as whole blood sodium and potassium concentrations, erythrocyte sodium and potassium concentrations and total monovalent cation concentration in erythrocyte (P < 0.05). The allele gene frequencies of GSHH and GSHh related with the glutathione concentration were calculated as 0.43 and 0.57, respectively. The difference between the mean values of low and high glutathione erythrocyte concentrations were also statistically significant (P < 0.01). Finally, the significant correlation coefficient between erythrocyte sodium and potassium concentrations was observed in this study (P < 0.05).Key words: Erythrocyte potassium, glutathione, blood polymorphism, Saanen, Malta goat

Tractable flux-driven temperature, density, and rotation profile evolution with the quasilinear gyrokinetic transport model QuaLiKiz

Quasilinear turbulent transport models are a successful tool for prediction of core tokamak plasma profiles in many regimes. Their success hinges on the reproduction of local nonlinear gyrokinetic fluxes. We focus on significant progress in the quasilinear gyrokinetic transport model QuaLiKiz (Bourdelle et al 2016 Plasma Phys. Control. Fusion 58 014036), which employs an approximated solution of the mode structures to significantly speed up computation time compared to full linear gyrokinetic solvers. Optimisation of the dispersion relation solution algorithm within integrated modelling applications leads to flux calculations faster than local nonlinear simulations. This allows tractable simulation of flux-driven dynamic profile evolution including all transport channels: ion and electron heat, main particles, impurities, and momentum. Furthermore, QuaLiKiz now includes the impact of rotation and temperature anisotropy induced poloidal asymmetry on heavy impurity transport, important for W-transport applications. Application within the JETTO integrated modelling code results in 1 s of JET plasma simulation within 10 h using 10 CPUs. Simultaneous predictions of core density, temperature, and toroidal rotation profiles for both JET hybrid and baseline experiments are presented, covering both ion and electron turbulence scales. The simulations are successfully compared to measured profiles, with agreement mostly in the 5%-25% range according to standard figures of merit. QuaLiKiz is now open source and available at www.qualikiz.com