Assessment of the immune capacity of mammary epithelial cells: comparison with mammary tissue after challenge with Escherichia coli

We examined the repertoire and extent of inflammation dependent gene regulation in a bovine mammary epithelial cell (MEC) model, to better understand the contribution of the MEC in the immune defence of the udder. We challenged primary cultures of MEC from cows with heat inactivated Escherichia coli pathogens and used Affymetrix DNA-microarrays to profile challenge related alterations in their transcriptome. Compared to acute mastitis, the most prominently activated genes comprise those encoding chemokines, interleukins, beta-defensins, serum amyloid A and haptoglobin. Hence, the MEC exert sentinel as well as effector functions of innate immune defence. E. coli stimulated a larger fraction of genes (30%) in the MEC belonging to the functional category Inflammatory Response than we recorded with the same microarrays during acute mastitis in the udder (17%). This observation underscores the exquisite immune capacity of MEC. To more closely examine the adequacy of immunological regulation in MEC, we compared the inflammation dependent regulation of factors contributing to the complement system between the udder versus the MEC. In the MEC we observed only up regulation of several complement factor-encoding genes. Mastitis, in contrast, in the udder strongly down regulates such genes encoding factors contributing to both, the classical pathway of complement activation and the Membrane Attack Complex, while the expression of factors contributing to the alternative pathway may be enhanced. This functionally polarized regulation of the complex complement pathway is not reflected in the MEC models

Research Data @ AgResearch

 Research Data @ AgResearch, ligtening talk from the eResearch NZ workshop - Can we characterise Aotearoa New Zealand’s research data at scale?</p

Mapping, Phylogenetic and Expression Analysis of the RNase (RNaseA) Locus in Cattle

The mammalian secreted ribonucleases (RNases) comprise a large family of structurally related proteins displaying considerable sequence variation, and have been used in evolutionary studies. RNase 1 (RNase A) has been assumed to play a role in digestion, while other members have been suggested to contribute to host defence. Using the recently assembled bovine genome sequence, we characterised the complete repertoire of genes present in the RNaseA family locus in cattle, and compared this with the equivalent locus in the human and mouse genomes. Several additions and corrections to the earlier analysis of the RNase locus in the mouse genome are presented. The bovine locus encodes 19 RNases, of which only six have unambiguous equivalent genes in the other two species. Chromosomal mapping and phylogenetic analysis indicate that a number of distinct gene duplication events have occurred in the cattle lineage since divergence from the human and mouse lineages. Substitution analysis suggests that some of these duplicated genes are under evolutionary pressure for purifying selection and may therefore be important to the physiology of cattle. Expression analysis revealed that individual RNases have a wide pattern of expression, including diverse mucosal epithelia and immune-related cells and tissues. These data clarify the full repertoire of bovine RNases and their relationships to those in humans and mice. They also suggest that RNase gene duplication within the bovine lineage accompanied by altered tissue-specific expression has contributed a survival advantage

Shared Approach to Building National Capability in eResearch

In July 2021, New Zealand eScience Infrastructure (NeSI) and AgResearch announced a new partnership aiming to design and deliver a future-focused eResearch Platform. Through the partnership, AgResearch aims to meet its needs to innovate in advanced computing and data methods for its research while participating in the growth and development of national research infrastructure. AgResearch will leverage the full power of NeSI’s new multi-tenant cloud-native high performance computing platform. This all-in-one environment brings together expertise, computing and data, research networks, instruments at the institutional edge, and scientific pipelines and workflows to harness the power of the platform as a super-facility for research. The collaboration model behind this platform shares and fosters expertise across both organisations. It forms mutual support networks for platform operations, user support, and in establishing critical mass through capability building and community-building. The partnership addresses a challenge commonly faced by institutions, where their research ambitions grow beyond what's possible to support through local investment. The collaboration model will be an exemplar for the research sector. In this session we will outline why we have taken this approach, what we are trying to achieve and provide some insight into the progress and learnings through the early phase of the partnership.ABOUT THE AUTHORS Nauman Maqbool is the Knowledge & eResearch Leader at AgResearch and is leading the effort to deploy the eResearch Platform and all associated services for AgResearch. He has a passion for eResearch, data and knowledge management and has held various roles in data science and research management.Georgina Rae is the Science Engagement Manager at NeSI where she ensures that NeSI is building strong relationships with the research sector. Prior to NeSI she has worked in molecular biology and intellectual property. She is passionate about enabling research and is interested in the fundamental shifts required to level up scientific research.</div

A computational approach for the unsteady flow of maxwell fluid with Caputo fractional derivatives

In this paper, the velocity field and the time dependent shear stress of Maxwell fluid with Caputo fractional derivatives in an infinite long circular cylinder of radius R is discussed. The motion in the fluid is produced by the circular cylinder. The fluid is initially at rest and at time t=0+, cylinder begins to oscillate with the velocity fsinωt, due to time dependent shear stress acting on the cylinder tangentially. The hybrid technique used in this paper for the solution of the problem has less computational efforts and time cost as compared to other commonly used methods. The obtained solutions are in transformed domain, which are expressed in terms of modified Bessel functions I0(·) and I1(·). The inverse Laplace transformation has been calculated numerically by using MATLAB package. The semi analytical solutions for Maxwell fluid with fractional derivatives are reduced to the similar solutions for Newtonian and ordinary Maxwell fluids as limiting cases. In the end, numerical simulations have been performed to analyze the behavior of fractional parameter α, kinematic viscosity ν, relaxation time λ, radius of the circular cylinder R and dynamic viscosity μ on our obtained solutions of velocity field and shear stress. Keywords: Shear stress, Maxwell fluid, Laplace transformation, Velocity field, Modified Bessel functio

Can machine learning help your research?

Presenting one machine learning approach which is applied to animals and how it can be applied to other research