Shaping our future: animal health in a global trading environment

Ireland is currently experiencing both the positive and negative effects of global trade in agricultural products. With increasing global competition, there is little doubt that Irish agricultural product must increasingly compete on the basis of quality, rather than price

Pentraxin-3 as a Marker of Advanced Atherosclerosis Results from the Bruneck, ARMY and ARFY Studies

PubMed ID: 22319633This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited

Functional Insight into the C-Terminal Extension of Halolysin SptA from Haloarchaeon Natrinema sp. J7

Halolysin SptA from haloarchaeon Natrinema sp. J7 consists of a subtilisin-like catalytic domain and a C-terminal extension (CTE) containing two cysteine residues. In this report, we have investigated the function of the CTE using recombinant enzymes expressed in Haloferax volcanii WFD11. Deletion of the CTE greatly reduced but did not abolish protease activity, which suggests that the CTE is not essential for enzyme folding. Mutational analysis suggests that residues Cys303 and Cys338 within the CTE form a disulfide bond that make this domain resistant to autocleavage and proteolysis under hypotonic conditions. Characterization of full-length and CTE-truncation enzymes indicates the CTE not only confers extra stability to the enzyme but also assists enzyme activity on protein substrates by facilitating binding at high salinities. Interestingly, homology modeling of the CTE yields a β-jelly roll-like structure similar to those seen in Claudin-binding domain of Clostridium perfringens enterotoxin (clostridial C-CPE) and collagen binding domain (CBD), and the CTE also possesses collagen-binding activity, making it a potential candidate as an anchoring unit in drug delivery systems

Local Cattle and Badger Populations Affect the Risk of Confirmed Tuberculosis in British Cattle Herds

Background: The control of bovine tuberculosis (bTB) remains a priority on the public health agenda in Great Britain, after launching in 1998 the Randomised Badger Culling Trial (RBCT) to evaluate the effectiveness of badger (Meles meles) culling as a control strategy. Our study complements previous analyses of the RBCT data (focusing on treatment effects) by presenting analyses of herd-level risks factors associated with the probability of a confirmed bTB breakdown in herds within each treatment: repeated widespread proactive culling, localized reactive culling and no culling (survey-only). Methodology/Principal Findings: New cases of bTB breakdowns were monitored inside the RBCT areas from the end of the first proactive badger cull to one year after the last proactive cull. The risk of a herd bTB breakdown was modeled using logistic regression and proportional hazard models adjusting for local farm-level risk factors. Inside survey-only and reactive areas, increased numbers of active badger setts and cattle herds within 1500 m of a farm were associated with an increased bTB risk. Inside proactive areas, the number of M. bovis positive badgers initially culled within 1500 m of a farm was the strongest predictor of the risk of a confirmed bTB breakdown. Conclusions/Significance: The use of herd-based models provide insights into how local cattle and badger populations affect the bTB breakdown risks of individual cattle herds in the absence of and in the presence of badger culling. These measures of local bTB risks could be integrated into a risk-based herd testing programme to improve the targeting o

Adenosine induces growth-cone turning of sensory neurons

The formation of appropriate connections between neurons and their specific targets is an essential step during development and repair of the nervous system. Growth cones are located at the leading edges of the growing neurites and respond to environmental cues in order to be guided to their final targets. Directional information can be coded by concentration gradients of substrate-bound or diffusible-guidance molecules. Here we show that concentration gradients of adenosine stimulate growth cones of sensory neurons (dorsal root ganglia) from chicken embryos to turn towards the adenosine source. This response is mediated by adenosine receptors. The subsequent signal transduction process involves cAMP. It may be speculated that the in vivo function of this response is concerned with the formation or the repair and regeneration of the peripheral nervous system

The relationships between workaholism and symptoms of psychiatric disorders: a large-scale cross-sectional study

Despite the many number of studies examining workaholism, large-scale studies have been lacking. The present study utilized an open web-based cross-sectional survey assessing symptoms of psychiatric disorders and workaholism among 16,426 workers (Mage = 37.3 years, SD = 11.4, range = 16–75 years). Participants were administered the Adult ADHD Self-Report Scale, the Obsession-Compulsive Inventory-Revised, the Hospital Anxiety and Depression Scale, and the Bergen Work Addiction Scale, along with additional questions examining demographic and work-related variables. Correlations between workaholism and all psychiatric disorder symptoms were positive and significant. Workaholism comprised the dependent variable in a three-step linear multiple hierarchical regression analysis. Basic demographics (age, gender, relationship status, and education) explained 1.2% of the variance in workaholism, whereas work demographics (work status, position, sector, and annual income) explained an additional 5.4% of the variance. Age (inversely) and managerial positions (positively) were of most importance. The psychiatric symptoms (ADHD, OCD, anxiety, and depression) explained 17.0% of the variance. ADHD and anxiety contributed considerably. The prevalence rate of workaholism status was 7.8% of the present sample. In an adjusted logistic regression analysis, all psychiatric symptoms were positively associated with being a workaholic. The independent variables explained between 6.1% and 14.4% in total of the variance in workaholism cases. Although most effect sizes were relatively small, the study’s findings expand our understanding of possible psychiatric predictors of workaholism, and particularly shed new insight into the reality of adult ADHD in work life. The study’s implications, strengths, and shortcomings are also discussed

Bovine Tuberculosis in Doñana Biosphere Reserve: The Role of Wild Ungulates as Disease Reservoirs in the Last Iberian Lynx Strongholds

Doñana National Park (DNP) in southern Spain is a UNESCO Biosphere Reserve where commercial hunting and wildlife artificial feeding do not take place and traditional cattle husbandry still exists. Herein, we hypothesized that Mycobacterium bovis infection prevalence in wild ungulates will depend on host ecology and that variation in prevalence will reflect variation in the interaction between hosts and environmental risk factors. Cattle bTB reactor rates increased in DNP despite compulsory testing and culling of infected animals. In this study, 124 European wild boar, 95 red deer, and 97 fallow deer were sampled from April 2006 to April 2007 and analyzed for M. bovis infection. Modelling and GIS were used to identify risk factors and intra and inter-species relationships. Infection with M. bovis was confirmed in 65 (52.4%) wild boar, 26 (27.4%) red deer and 18 (18.5%) fallow deer. In the absence of cattle, wild boar M. bovis prevalence reached 92.3% in the northern third of DNP. Wild boar showed more than twice prevalence than that in deer (p<0.001). Modelling revealed that M. bovis prevalence decreased from North to South in wild boar (p<0.001) and red deer (p<0.01), whereas no spatial pattern was evidenced for fallow deer. Infection risk in wild boar was dependent on wild boar M. bovis prevalence in the buffer area containing interacting individuals (p<0.01). The prevalence recorded in this study is among the highest reported in wildlife. Remarkably, this high prevalence occurs in the absence of wildlife artificial feeding, suggesting that a feeding ban alone would have a limited effect on wildlife M. bovis prevalence. In DNP, M. bovis transmission may occur predominantly at the intra-species level due to ecological, behavioural and epidemiological factors. The results of this study allow inferring conclusions on epidemiological bTB risk factors in Mediterranean habitats that are not managed for hunting purposes. Our results support the need to consider wildlife species for the control of bTB in cattle and strongly suggest that bTB may affect animal welfare and conservation

Phylogenetic Distribution and Evolutionary History of Bacterial DEAD-Box Proteins

DEAD-box proteins are found in all domains of life and participate in almost all cellular processes that involve RNA. The presence of DEAD and Helicase_C conserved domains distinguish these proteins. DEAD-box proteins exhibit RNA-dependent ATPase activity in vitro, and several also show RNA helicase activity. In this study, we analyzed the distribution and architecture of DEAD-box proteins among bacterial genomes to gain insight into the evolutionary pathways that have shaped their history. We identified 1,848 unique DEAD-box proteins from 563 bacterial genomes. Bacterial genomes can possess a single copy DEAD-box gene, or up to 12 copies of the gene, such as in Shewanella. The alignment of 1,208 sequences allowed us to perform a robust analysis of the hallmark motifs of DEAD-box proteins and determine the residues that occur at high frequency, some of which were previously overlooked. Bacterial DEAD-box proteins do not generally contain a conserved C-terminal domain, with the exception of some members that possess a DbpA RNA-binding domain (RBD). Phylogenetic analysis showed a separation of DbpA-RBD-containing and DbpA-RBD-lacking sequences and revealed a group of DEAD-box protein genes that expanded mainly in the Proteobacteria. Analysis of DEAD-box proteins from Firmicutes and γ-Proteobacteria, was used to deduce orthologous relationships of the well-studied DEAD-box proteins from Escherichia coli and Bacillus subtilis. These analyses suggest that DbpA-RBD is an ancestral domain that most likely emerged as a specialized domain of the RNA-dependent ATPases. Moreover, these data revealed numerous events of gene family expansion and reduction following speciation

A Survey of New Temperature-Sensitive, Embryonic-Lethal Mutations in C. elegans: 24 Alleles of Thirteen Genes

To study essential maternal gene requirements in the early C. elegans embryo, we have screened for temperature-sensitive, embryonic lethal mutations in an effort to bypass essential zygotic requirements for such genes during larval and adult germline development. With conditional alleles, multiple essential requirements can be examined by shifting at different times from the permissive temperature of 15°C to the restrictive temperature of 26°C. Here we describe 24 conditional mutations that affect 13 different loci and report the identity of the gene mutations responsible for the conditional lethality in 22 of the mutants. All but four are mis-sense mutations, with two mutations affecting splice sites, another creating an in-frame deletion, and one creating a premature stop codon. Almost all of the mis-sense mutations affect residues conserved in orthologs, and thus may be useful for engineering conditional mutations in other organisms. We find that 62% of the mutants display additional phenotypes when shifted to the restrictive temperature as L1 larvae, in addition to causing embryonic lethality after L4 upshifts. Remarkably, we also found that 13 out of the 24 mutations appear to be fast-acting, making them particularly useful for careful dissection of multiple essential requirements. Our findings highlight the value of C. elegans for identifying useful temperature-sensitive mutations in essential genes, and provide new insights into the requirements for some of the affected loci