Bovine GDF10 gene polymorphism analysis and its association with body measurement traits in Chinese indigenous cattle

The objective of this research was to detect bovine GDF10 gene polymorphism and analyze its association with body measurement traits (BMT) of animals sampled from 6 different Chinese indigenous cattle populations. The populations included Xuelong (Xl), Luxi (Lx), Qinchuan (Qc), Jiaxian red (Jx), Xianang (Xn) and Nanyang (Ny). Blood samples were taken from a total of 417 female animals stratified into age categories of 12–36 months. Polymerase chain reaction–single strand conformation polymorphism (PCR–SSCP) was employed to find out GDF10 single polymorphism nucleotide (SNPs) and explore their possible association with BMT. Sequence analysis of GDF10 gene revealed 3 SNPs in total: 1 in exon1 (G142A) and 2 in exon3 (A11471G, and T12495C). G142A and T12495C SNPs are both synonymous mutation. They showed 2 genotypes namely respectively (GG, GA) and (PP and PB). A11471G SNP is a missense mutation leading to the change of Alanine to Threonine amino acid. It showed three genotypes namely AA, BB and AB. Analysis of association of polymorphism with body measurement traits at the three locus showed that there were significant effects on BMT in Qc, Jx and Ny cattle population. These results suggest that the GDF10 gene might have potential effects on body measurement traits in the above mentioned cattle populations and could be used for marker-assisted selection

Observation of a ppb mass threshoud enhancement in \psi^\prime\to\pi^+\pi^-J/\psi(J/\psi\to\gamma p\bar{p}) decay

The decay channel $\psi^\prime\to\pi^+\pi^-J/\psi(J/\psi\to\gamma p\bar{p})$ is studied using a sample of $1.06\times 10^8$ $\psi^\prime$ events collected by the BESIII experiment at BEPCII. A strong enhancement at threshold is observed in the $p\bar{p}$ invariant mass spectrum. The enhancement can be fit with an $S$-wave Breit-Wigner resonance function with a resulting peak mass of $M=1861^{+6}_{-13} {\rm (stat)}^{+7}_{-26} {\rm (syst)} {\rm MeV/}c^2$ and a narrow width that is $\Gamma<38 {\rm MeV/}c^2$ at the 90% confidence level. These results are consistent with published BESII results. These mass and width values do not match with those of any known meson resonance.Comment: 5 pages, 3 figures, submitted to Chinese Physics

Comparisons of seven algorithms for pathway analysis using the WTCCC Crohn's Disease dataset

<p>Abstract</p> <p>Background</p> <p>Though rooted in genomic expression studies, pathway analysis for genome-wide association studies (GWAS) has gained increasing popularity, since it has the potential to discover hidden disease pathogenic mechanisms by combining statistical methods with biological knowledge. Generally, algorithms or programs proposed recently can be categorized by different types of input data, null hypothesis or counts of analysis stages. Due to complexity caused by SNP, gene and pathway relationships, re-sampling strategies like permutation are always utilized to derive an empirical distribution for test statistics for evaluating the significance of candidate pathways. However, evaluation of these algorithms on real GWAS datasets and real biological pathway databases needs to be addressed before we apply them widely with confidence.</p> <p>Findings</p> <p>Two algorithms which use summary statistics from GWAS as input were implemented in KGG, a novel and user-friendly software tool for GWAS pathway analysis. Comparisons of these two algorithms as well as the other five selected algorithms were conducted by analyzing the WTCCC Crohn's Disease dataset utilizing the MsigDB canonical pathways. As a result of using permutation to obtain empirical p-value, most of these methods could control Type I error rate well, although some are conservative. However, the methods varied greatly in terms of power and running time, with the PLINK truncated set-based test being the most powerful and KGG being the fastest.</p> <p>Conclusions</p> <p>Raw data-based algorithms, such as those implemented in PLINK, are preferable for GWAS pathway analysis as long as computational capacity is available. It may be worthwhile to apply two or more pathway analysis algorithms on the same GWAS dataset, since the methods differ greatly in their outputs and might provide complementary findings for the studied complex disease.</p

First observation of the decays χcJ→π0π0π0π0

We present a study of the P-wave spin-triplet charmonium χ cJ decays (J=0, 1, 2) into π0π0π0π0. The analysis is based on 106×106 ψ⊃′ decays recorded with the BESIII detector at the BEPCII electron positron collider. The decay into the π0π0π0π0 hadronic final state is observed for the first time. We measure the branching fractions B(χ c0→π0π0π0π0)=(3.34±0. 06±0.44)×10⊃-3, B(χ c1→π0π0π0π0) =(0.57±0.03±0.08)×10⊃-3, and B(χ c2→π0π0π0π0)=(1.21±0.05±0.16) ×10⊃-3, where the uncertainties are statistical and systematical, respectively. © 2011 American Physical Society.published_or_final_versio

Measurement of the matrix element for the decay η′→ηπ +π -

The Dalitz plot of η⊃′→ηπ⊃+π⊃- decay is studied using (225.2±2.8)×106 J/ψ events collected with the BESIII detector at the BEPCII e⊃+e⊃- collider. With the largest sample of η⊃′ decays to date, the parameters of the Dalitz plot are determined in a generalized and a linear representation. Also, the branching fraction of J/ψ→γη⊃′ is determined to be (4.84±0.03±0.24)×10⊃-3, where the first error is statistical and the second systematic. © 2011 American Physical Society.published_or_final_versio