Evaluation of a microbial muramidase supplementation on growth performance, apparent ileal digestibility, and intestinal histology of broiler chickens

The current study evaluated the effects of different inclusion levels of microbial muramidase (Muramidase 007, DSM Nutritional Products) on gastrointestinal functionality by determination of apparent ileal digestibility (AID) of nutrients, investigation of intestinal histomorphology, and quantification of resulting growth performance. Four maize-wheat-soybean experimental diets were produced without (C) and with different dosages of muramidase: low (L, 25,000 LSU(F)/kg), medium (M, 35,000 LSU(F)/kg), and high (H, 45,000 LSU(F)/kg); diets were fed to broilers for 35 d. At the end of the experiment, AID of ether extract (EE), crude protein (CP), Ca, and P were determined and samples of the mid-jejunum and -ileum were collected for histomorphological observations. Data were subjected to ANOVA analysis using the GLM procedure. Orthogonal polynomial contrasts were used to assess linear and quadratic effects of different levels of the muramidase. At the end of the trial, Muramidase 007 supplementation linearly increased body weight gain and decreased feed conversion ratio (FCR) (P ≤ 0.05). Adding the muramidase to broiler diets also linearly increased the European poultry efficiency factor (P ≤ 0.05). Inclusion of the muramidase in broiler diets linearly increased AID of CP, EE, and P (P ≤ 0.05), and the H group had a higher AID of EE and CP compared to C group (P ≤ 0.05). Microbial muramidase supplementation linearly increased ileal villus length to crypt depth ratio and decreased the number of ileal CD45 cells (P ≤ 0.05). Broilers fed M and H diets had fewer number of CD45 cells in the ileum compared to those in C group (P ≤ 0.05). In conclusion, the results of the present study demonstrated that inclusion of the microbial muramidase in broiler diets could increase AID of key nutrients and improve growth performance in broilers. Adding microbial muramidase to broiler diets can therefore be considered as an interesting prospect to improve gastrointestinal functionality. Biological mechanisms causing these improvements need to be studied further

Predicting Forage Provision of Grasslands Across Climate Zones by Hyperspectral Measurements

The potential of grasslands’ fodder production is a crucial management measure, while its quantification is still laborious and costly. Remote sensing technologies, such as hyperspectral field measurements, enable fast and non-destructive estimation. However, such methods are still limited in transferability to other locations or climatic conditions. With this study, we aim to predict forage nutritive value, quantity, and energy yield from hyperspectral canopy reflections of grasslands across three climate zones. We took hyperspectral measurements with a field spectrometer from grassland canopies in temperate, tropical and semi-arid grasslands, and analyzed corresponding biomass samples for their quantity (BM), metabolizable energy content (ME) and metabolizable energy yield (MEY). Three machine learning algorithms were used to establish prediction models for single and across climate regions. The normalized root mean squared error (nRMSE) for ME, BM and MEY varied between 0.12 – 0.19, 0.14 – 0.21, and 0.15 – 0.21, respectively. The ME trans-climatic model showed the best accuracy compared to the local models. Trans-climatic model predictions of climate-specific data, decrease in accuracy to 0.16 – 0.21, 0.17 – 0.24, and 0.19 – 0.28 for ME, BM and MEY compared to predictions with climate-specific models. Trans-climatic models with feed-forward neural networks showed similar performance for ME but higher accuracies for BM and MEY predictions. The trans-climatic models generally showed good performance for forage nutritive value and forage provision. Our results suggest that models based on hyperspectral measurements offer great potential to assess or even map the forage nutritive value of grasslands across climate zones

The effects of fermentation and enzymatic treatment of pea on nutrient digestibility and growth performance of broilers

Dieser Beitrag ist mit Zustimmung des Rechteinhabers aufgrund einer (DFG geförderten) Allianz- bzw. Nationallizenz frei zugänglich.This publication is with permission of the rights owner freely accessible due to an Alliance licence and a national licence (funded by the DFG, German Research Foundation) respectively.The present study examined the impacts of native, fermented or enzymatically treated peas (Pisum sativum L.) inclusion in broiler diets, on growth performance and nutrient digestibility. For the fermentation process, Madonna pea was mixed with water (1/1) containing 2.57×108 Bacillus subtilis (GalliPro®) spores/kg pea and then, incubated for 48 h at 30 °C. For the enzymatic treatment process, the used water for dough production contained three enzymes, AlphaGalTM (α-galactosidase), RONOZYME® ProAct and VP (protease and pectinases respectively – DSM, Switzerland) and the pea dough incubated for 24 h at 30°C. Nine corn-wheat-soybean diets were formulated by supplying 10%, 20% and 30% of the required CP with either native, fermented or enzymatically treated peas. Performance was recorded weekly and at the end of the experiment (day 35), apparent ileal digestibility (AID) of CP, amino acids (AA), crude fat, starch, Ca, P and K were determined. Data were subjected to ANOVA using GLM procedure with a 3×3 factorial arrangement of treatments. Both processes reduced α-galactosides, phytate, trypsin inhibitor activity and resistant starch in peas. Increasing levels of pea products up to 300 g/kg diet, reduced BW gain and feed intake (P⩽0.05). Broilers fed diets containing enzymatically treated pea had the best feed conversion ratio at day 35. Different types of pea product and their inclusion levels had no effect on AID of all nutrients. The interaction between type of the pea products and inclusion levels was significant for AID of starch. For native pea diets, 10% group showed similar AID of starch to 20% native pea but it had higher AID than 30% native pea. For fermented and enzymatically treated groups, all three levels displayed similar AID of starch. In conclusion, enzymatic treatment and fermentation could improve the nutritional quality of pea. Inclusion of enzymatically treated pea in broiler diets could improve broiler performance compared with other pea products while, it displayed neither positive nor negative impact on nutrient digestibility. The present findings indicate the feasibility of these processes, particularly enzymatic treatment, for improving the nutritional quality of pea as a protein source for broiler nutrition

Inhibition of HIV-1 in Cell Culture by Synthetic Humate Analogues Derived from Hydroquinone: Mechanism of Inhibition

AbstractHumic acids are natural constituents of soil and ground water and mainly consist of mixtures of polycyclic phenolic compounds. A similar complex of compounds with a mean size of about 1000 Da, designated HS-1500, was synthesized by oxidation of hydroquinone. HS-1500 inhibited HIV-1 infection of MT-2 cells with an IC50of 50–300 ng/ml and showed a mean cell toxicity of about 600 μg/ml. Inhibition of HIV-induced syncytium formation was observed at 10–50 μg/ml. Treatment of free and cell-attached HIV with HS-1500 irreversibly reduced its infectivity, whereas the susceptibility of target cells for the virus was not impaired by treatment prior to infection. The HIV envelope protein gp120SU bound to sepharose-coupled HS-1500 and could be eluted by high salt and detergent. HS-1500 interfered with the CD4-induced proteolytic cleavage of the V3 loop of virion gp120SU. Furthermore, binding of V3 loop-specific antibodies was irreversibly inhibited, whereas binding of soluble CD4 to gp120SU on virus and infected cells was not affected. In conclusion, our data suggest, that the synthetic humic acid analogue inhibits the infectivity of HIV particles by interference with a V3 loop-mediated step of virus entry

Tolerance and safety evaluation of N, N-dimethylglycine, a naturally occurring organic compound, as a feed additive in broiler diets

N,N-dimethylglycine (DMG) is a tertiary amino acid that naturally occurs as an intermediate metabolite in choline-to-glycine metabolism. The objective of the present trial was to evaluate tolerance, safety and bioaccumulation of dietary DMG in broilers when supplemented at 1 g and 10 g Na-DMG/kg. A feeding trial was conducted using 480 1-d-old broiler chicks that were randomly allocated to twenty-four pens and fed one of three test diets added with 0, 1 or 10 g Na-DMG/kg during a 39 d growth period. Production performance was recorded to assess tolerance and efficacy of the supplement. At the end of the trial, toxicity was evaluated by means of haematology, plasma biochemistry and histopathology of liver, kidney and heart (n 12), whereas bioaccumulation was assessed on breast meat, liver, blood, kidney and adipose tissue (n 8). Carcass traits were similar between the control and 1 g Na-DMG/kg feed groups (P.0·05), but the feed:gain ratio was significantly improved at 1 g Na-DMG/kg feed compared with the control or the 10-fold dose (P¼0·008). Histological examinations showed no pathological effects and results of haematology and plasma biochemistry revealed similar values between the test groups (P.0·05). Bioaccumulation occurred at the 10-fold dose, but the resulting DMG content in breast meat was comparable with, for instance, wheat bran and much lower than uncooked spinach. In conclusion, DMG at 1 g Na-DMG/kg improved the feed:gain ratio in broilers without DMG being accumulated in consumer parts. Furthermore, dietary supplementation with DMG up to 10 g Na-DMG/kg did not induce toxicity or impaired performance in broilers

Optical Grating Studies in A-As2S3 Films using Scanning Force Microscopy

For high quality computer generated holograms As2S3-films are used as a real-ime phase recording material . To reach the required quality of optical interconnects it is necessary to expose the exact refractive index change for defined wave front distortions. Different methods were used, as scanning force microscopy (SFM), Mach Zehnder interferometry, confocal laser microscopy and interferometer microscopy to measure the wave front distortion on the pixel level. A computer simulation shows good agreement with the experimental results

A global fit of ππ\pi\pi and πK\pi K elastic scattering in ChPT with dispersion relations

We apply the one-loop results of the $SU(3)_L\times SU(3)_R$ ChPT suplemented with the inverse amplitude method to fit the available experimental data on $\pi\pi$ and $\pi K$ scattering. With esentially only three parameters we describe accurately data corresponding to six different channels, namely $(I,J)=(0,0), (2,0), (1,1), (1/2,0), (3/2,0)$ and $(1/2,1)$. In addition we reproduce the first resonances of the $(1,1)$ and $(1/2,1)$ channel with the right mass corresponding to the $\rho$ and the $K^*(892)$ particles.Comment: 19 pages, 5 figures available on request, FT/UCM/10/9

Programmable active memories in real-time tasks: implementing data-driven triggers for LHC experiments

The future Large Hadron Collider (LHC), to be built at CERN, presents among other technological challenges a formidable problem of real-time data analysis. At a primary event rate of 40 MHz, a multi-stage trigger system has to analyze data to decide which is the fraction of events that should be preserved on permanent storage for further analysis. We report on implementations of local algorithms for feature extraction as part of triggering, using the detectors of the proposed ATLAS experiment as a model. The algorithms were implemented for a decision frequency of 100 kHz, on different data-driven programmable devices based on structures of field- programmable gate arrays and memories. The implementations were demonstrated at full speed with emulated input, and were also integrated into a prototype detector running in a test beam at CERN, in June 1994

Cardiovascular development: towards biomedical applicability: Epicardium-derived cells in cardiogenesis and cardiac regeneration

During cardiogenesis, the epicardium grows from the proepicardial organ to form the outermost layer of the early heart. Part of the epicardium undergoes epithelial-mesenchymal transformation, and migrates into the myocardium. These epicardium- derived cells differentiate into interstitial fibroblasts, coronary smooth muscle cells, and perivascular fibroblasts. Moreover, epicardium-derived cells are important regulators of formation of the compact myocardium, the coronary vasculature, and the Purkinje fiber network, thus being essential for proper cardiac development. The fibrous structures of the heart such as the fibrous heart skeleton and the semilunar and atrioventricular valves also depend on a contribution of these cells during development. We hypothesise that the essential properties of epicardium-derived cells can be recapitulated in adult diseased myocardium. These cells can therefore be considered as a novel source of adult stem cells useful in clinical cardiac regeneration therapy