Polymorphisms in Epigenetic and Meat Quality Related Genes in Fourteen Cattle Breeds and Association with Beef Quality and Carcass Traits

Improvement for carcass traits related to beef quality is the key concern in beef production. Recent reports found that epigenetics mediates the interaction of individuals with environment and nutrition. The present study was designed to analyze the genetic effect of single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) in seven epigenetic-related genes (DNMT1, DNMT3a, DNMT3b, DNMT3L, Ago1, Ago2, and HDAC5) and two meat quality candidate genes (CAPN1 and PRKAG3) on fourteen carcass traits related to beef quality in a Snow Dragon beef population, and also to identify SNPs in a total of fourteen cattle populations. Sixteen SNPs were identified and genotyped in 383 individuals sampled from the 14 cattle breeds, which included 147 samples from the Snow Dragon beef population. Data analysis showed significant association of 8 SNPs within 4 genes related to carcass and/or meat quality traits in the beef populations. SNP1 (13154420A>G) in exon 17 of DNMT1 was significantly associated with rib-eye width and lean meat color score (pG) of DNMT3a was significantly associated with six beef quality traits. Those individuals with the wild-type genotype AA of DNMT3a showed an increase in carcass weight, chilled carcass weight, flank thicknesses, chuck short rib thickness, chuck short rib score and in chuck flap weight in contrast to the GG genotype. Five out of six SNPs in DNMT3b gene were significantly associated with three beef quality traits. SNP15 (45219258C>T) in CAPN1 was significantly associated with chuck short rib thickness and lean meat color score (p<0.05). The significant effect of SNP15 on lean meat color score individually and in combination with each of other 14 SNPs qualify this SNP to be used as potential marker for improving the trait. In addition, the frequencies of most wild-type alleles were higher than those of the mutant alleles in the native and foreign cattle breeds. Seven SNPs were identified in the epigenetic-related genes. The SNP15 in CAPN1 could be used as a powerful genetic marker in selection programs for beef quality improvement in the Snow Dragon Beef population

Grazing-Exclusion Effects on Aboveground Biomass and Water-Use Efficiency of Alpine Grasslands on the Northern Tibetan Plateau

The influences of grazing exclusion on plant species composition and intrinsic water use efficiency (Wi) of alpine grasslands on the Northern Tibet Plateau are not well understood. We conducted a multisite transect field survey across the three main alpine ecosystems (meadow, steppe, and desert steppe) with nine pairs of grazing excluded and adjacent open grazed pastures. Short-term grazing exclusion (started in 2006) did not result in significant changes in nutrients or bulk density of the surface soils (0 - 15 cm), but it slightly changed the aboveground biomass (AGB) and coverage at both community and species levels. Community foliar δ13C and Wi differed among alpine grassland types, with values for steppe being similar to those for meadow and with desert steppe values being higher than both of these. Foliar δ13C and inferred Wi differed among the dominant species and varied negatively with precipitation and positively with temperature in 2010. These results confirm that there is an environmentally selective effect on the replacement of dominant species.There was no evident difference in foliar δ13C or Wi between grazing-excluded and open grazed sites, but there was a slight increase of AGB and coverage in grazing excluded sites compared to open grazed ones at the species and community levels. These results indicated that grazing exclusion may have no clear influence on the physiological processes related to foliar water usage at the species level, but may have a cumulative effect on the carbon-water balance at the community level. Slight changes in linear regressions of foliar δ13C and Wi plotted across climatic gradients indicated that grasslands under grazing management might be more sensitive to regional climatic changes.The Rangeland Ecology & Management archives are made available by the Society for Range Management and the University of Arizona Libraries. Contact [email protected] for further information.Migrated from OJS platform August 202

Design and implementation of partial dynamically reconfigurable FPGA process scheduling

In view of the diverse edge computing requirements of the 6G era, reconfigurable technology based on FPGAs can achieve lower latency and provide diversified services. Based on the idea of local dynamic reconfiguration, the ICAP interface is used to reconfigure FPGA resources, so as to realize the local dynamic reconfigurable scheme on the FPGA logic. Drawing on the idea of software process management in the operating system, based on the concept of introducing hardware processes in the Linux operating system, it is possible to divide a whole block of FPGA resources into multiple small FPGA resource blocks, each small reconfigurable FPGA resource block can be abstracted into a hardware process, the hardware process is actually not running on the CPU but running in the FPGA logical resource area, and is only a software language description of the hardware process on the operating system. As a result, the hardware scheme of CPU plus FPGA is designed to achieve partial reconfigurable system, and verified on Xilinx Zynq series chips, and the FPGA hardware resources are scheduled and allocated in a process manner, which greatly improves the utilization and flexibility of FPGA hardware resources

Design and implementation of communication middleware of heterogeneous processors in STRS system

Aiming at the problems of low real-time performance, large redundancy, and inability to recover from faults in the communication between heterogeneous processors in the Space Telecommunication Radio System (STRS),the distributed data distribution service (DDS) middleware technology is introduced into the STRS architecture to realize the publish/subscribe mode-based communication middleware between the STRS heterogeneous processor waveform application components.Under the premise of being fully compatible with the STRS standard specification, it effectively improves the real-time performance of the communication system based on STRS, reduces the complexity and redundancy of the system, improves the development efficiency, saves the development and maintenance costs of the system, and realizes the dynamic refactoring of global and local modules

Spatial variability of soil moisture at typical alpine meadow and steppe sites in the Qinghai-Tibetan Plateau permafrost region

NKBRSF, PR China [2005CB422005]; National Basic Task Project [2006FY110200

Root biomass distribution in alpine ecosystems of the northern Tibetan Plateau

National Key Basic Research Development Program of China 2010CB951704;National Science and Technology Support Program of China 2007BAC06B01The root biomass distribution in alpine ecosystems (alpine meadow, alpine steppe, desert grassland and alpine desert) was investigated along a transect on the northern Tibetan Plateau in 2009. The results showed that roots were mainly concentrated in the 0-20 cm layer, and root biomass decreased exponentially with increasing soil depth. Root biomass was estimated to be 1,381.41 +/- A 245.29 g m(-2) in the top 20 cm soil, accounting for 85% of the total root biomass. The distribution pattern of the root biomass proportion along the soil profile was similar in different alpine ecosystems. The root biomass density varied with different alpine ecosystems and the total average root biomass was 1,626.08 +/- A 301.76 g m(-2). Root biomass was significantly correlated with average relative humidity, annual precipitation and soil organic matter. This indicates that precipitation and soil organic matter might be crucial for plant growth in the study area, while temperature is not an important factor controlling root growth

Synthesis of monodisperse iron oxide nanoparticles: Effect of temperature, time, solvent, and surfactant

<p>Iron oxide nanoparticles (NPs) were prepared by the thermal decomposition of iron-oleate. The effects of reaction temperature, time, solvent, and surfactant were tested. The synthesized NPs were characterized by X-ray diffraction, Transmission electron microscopy, X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy, thermogravimetric analysis,, and Fourier transform infrared. The results show that reaction time has little effect on the sizes of synthesized NPs, while the solvent directly decides the sizes. There is a most appropriate temperature to fulfill perfect monodisperse iron oxide NPs. Moreover, different surfactants lead to different shapes of synthesized NPs.</p