Molecular characterization and function analysis of the vitellogenin receptor from the cotton bollworm, Helicoverpa armigera (Hubner) (Lepidoptera, Noctuidae)

Developing oocytes accumulate plentiful yolk protein during oogenesis through receptor-mediated endocytosis. The vitellogenin receptor (VgR), belonging to the low-density lipoprotein receptor (LDLR) family, regulates the absorption of yolk protein. In this work, the full-length vitellogenin receptor (HaVgR) in the cotton bollworm Helicoverpa armigera was identified, encoding a 1817 residue protein. Sequence alignment revealed that the sequence of HaVgR contained all of the conservative structural motifs of LDLR family members, and phylogenetic analysis indicated that HaVgR had a high identity among Lepidoptera and was distinct from that of other insects. Consistent with other insects, HaVgR was specifically expressed in ovarian tissue. The developmental expression pattern showed that HaVgR was first transcribed in the newly metamorphosed female adults, reached a peak in 2-day-old adults and then declined. Western blot analysis also revealed an ovarian-specific and developing expression pattern, which was consistent with the HaVgR mRNA transcription. Moreover, RNAi-mediated HaVgR knockdown strongly reduced the VgR expression in both the mRNA and protein levels, which inhibited the yolk protein deposition in the ovaries, led to the dramatic accumulation of vitellogenin and the up-regulation of HaVg expression in hemolymph, and eventually resulted in a declined fecundity. Together, all of these findings demonstrate that HaVgR is a specific receptor in uptake and transportation of yolk protein for the maturation of oocytes and that it plays a critical role in female reproduction

Experimental Infection of Rabbits with Rabbit and Genotypes 1 and 4 Hepatitis E Viruses

Background: A recent study provided evidence that farmed rabbits in China harbor a novel hepatitis E virus (HEV) genotype. Although the rabbit HEV isolate had 77-79% nucleotide identity to the mammalian HEV genotypes 1 to 4, their genomic organization is very similar. Since rabbits are used widely experimentally, including as models of infection, we investigated whether they constitute an appropriate animal model for human HEV infection.Methods: Forty-two SPF rabbits were divided randomly into eleven groups and inoculated with six different isolates of rabbit HEV, two different doses of a second-passage rabbit HEV, and with genotype 1 and 4 HEV. Sera and feces were collected weekly after inoculation. HEV antigen, RNA, antibody and alanine aminotransferase in sera and HEV RNA in feces were detected. The liver samples were collected during necropsy subject to histopathological examination.Findings: Rabbits inoculated with rabbit HEV became infected with HEV, with viremia, fecal virus shedding and high serum levels of viral antigens, and developed hepatitis, with elevation of the liver enzyme, ALT. The severity of disease corresponded to the infectious dose (genome equivalents), with the most severe hepatic disease caused by strain GDC54-18. However, only two of nine rabbits infected with HEV genotype 4, and none infected with genotype 1, developed hepatitis although six of nine rabbits inoculated with the genotype 1 HEV and in all rabbits inoculated with the genotype 4 HEV seroconverted to be positive for anti-HEV IgG antibody by 14 weeks post-inoculation.Conclusions: These data indicate that rabbits are an appropriate model for rabbit HEV infection but are not likely to be useful for the study of human HEV. The rabbit HEV infection of rabbits may provide an appropriate parallel animal model to study HEV pathogenesis

A cytomegalovirus peptide-specific antibody alters natural killer cell homeostasis and ss shared in several autoimmune diseases

Human cytomegalovirus (hCMV), a ubiquitous beta-herpesvirus, has been associated with several autoimmune diseases. However, the direct role of hCMV in inducing autoimmune disorders remains unclear. Here we report the identification of an autoantibody that recognizes a group of peptides with a conserved motif matching the Pp150 protein of hCMV (anti-Pp150) and is shared among patients with various autoimmune diseases. Anti-Pp150 also recognizes the single-pass membrane protein CIP2A and induces the death of CD56bright NK cells, a natural killer cell subset whose expansion is correlated with autoimmune disease. Consistent with this finding, the percentage of circulating CD56bright NK cells is reduced in patients with several autoimmune diseases and negatively correlates with anti-Pp150 concentration. CD56bright NK cell death occurs via both antibody- and complement-dependent cytotoxicity. Our findings reveal that a shared hCMV-induced autoantibody is involved in the decrease of CD56bright NK cells and may thus contribute to the onset of autoimmune disorders

Clinical and Radiological Outcomes of Anterior Approach Microscopic Surgery for the Pincer Mechanism in Cervical Spondylotic Myelopathy

Objective. We aimed to evaluate the efficacy of anterior approach microscopic surgery for patients with the pincer mechanism in cervical spondylotic myelopathy. Methods. The clinical data of pincer cervical spondylotic myelopathy that received anterior cervical decompression and fusion in our hospital from Aug 2014 to Dec 2017 were analyzed retrospectively, including 12 males and 9 females, with an average age of 64.3 years (range 46-81 years). Occupying rate, anterior occupying rate, and posterior occupying rate were measured on pre- and postoperative mid-sagittal MRIs. Pre- and postoperative Japanese Orthopedic Association (JOA) scores, intervertebral space height, and C2 to C7 Cobb’s angle were analyzed. Result. Duration of follow-up was six months. The pre- and postoperative anterior occupying rate were averagely 38.6±8.5% and 12.9±5.5%, respectively, the posterior occupying rates were averagely 27.4±7.2% and 13.1±6.6%, respectively, and Cobb’s angle changed from 15.3±8.0° to 22.7±7.9°. The intervertebral space height increased from 4.6±0.4mm to 6.5±0.4mm. JOA scores improved significantly by 59.4±34.0% at six months after surgery. Conclusion. Decompression by anterior microscopic surgery can increase spinal canal volume directly, recover intervertebral space height, and resize Cobb’s angle, but decrease the posterior compression by ligament Flava indirectly. Anterior decompression under the microscope may provide an alternative surgical option for partial patients with the pincer mechanism in cervical spondylotic myelopathy

Hypernetwork Link Prediction Method Based on Fusion of Topology and Attribute Features

Link prediction aims at predicting missing or potential links based on the known information of complex networks. Most existing methods focus on pairwise low-order relationships while ignoring the high-order interaction and the rich attribute information of entities in the actual network, leading to the low performance of the model in link prediction. To mine the cross-modality interactions between the high-order structure and attributes of the network, this paper proposes a hypernetwork link prediction method for fusion topology and attributes (TA-HLP). Firstly, a dual channel coder is employed for jointly learning the structural features and attribute features of nodes. In structural encoding, a node-level attention mechanism is designed to aggregate neighbor information to learn structural patterns effectively. In attribute encoding, the hypergraph is used to refine the attribute features. The high-order relationship between nodes and attributes is modeled based on the node-attribute-node feature update, which preserves the semantic information jointly reflected by nodes and attributes. Moreover, in the joint embedding, a hyperedge-level attention mechanism is introduced to capture nodes with different importance in the hyperedge. Extensive experiments on six data sets demonstrate that this method has achieved a more significant link prediction effect than the existing methods

Energy content, nutrient digestibility coefficient, growth performance and serum parameters of pigs fed diets containing tomato pomace

This study designed was to evaluate energy content and apparent total tract digestibility (ATTD) of nutrients in tomato pomace (TP), and to determine the effects of TP on the performance of growing pigs. In Exp. 1, 12 barrows were allocated to 2 treatments, a basal diet or a diet containing 194.6 g/kg TP. Exp. 2, growing pigs (n = 180) were allocated to 5 treatments: T1 was a basal diet. T2 and T3 were diets containing 50 or 100 g/kg TP, respectively. T4 and T5 were based on T2 or T3 except that soybean oil (SBO) was added. Soybean oil was added such that digestible energy content was equivalent to basal diet. In Exp. 1, the DE and ME content of TP were 7.01 and 6.59 MJ/kg, respectively. The ATTD of DM, CP, GE, OM and NDF were 0.45, 0.54, 0.35, 0.46 and 0.39, respectively. In Exp. 2, TP addition linearly increased (P < .05) G:F and decreased (P < .05) ADG, ATTD of DM, EE, NDF, GE and OM. In 50 g/kg TP diet, SBO addition increased (P < .05) ATTD of DM, EE, NDF, GE and OM. Optimal supplementation of TP in diets is 50 g/kg for growing pigs, but increasing dietary energy density can largely eliminate the negative effects of fibre in TP. Abbreviations: ADFI: average daily feed intake; ADG: average daily gain; ALB: albumin; ALT: glutamic-pyruvic transaminase; AST: glutamic oxalacetic transaminase; ATTD: apparent total tract digestibility; BW: body weight; CLB: globulin; CREA: creatinine; G:F: gain:feed ratio; GLU: glucose; GSH-Px: glutathione peroxidase; HDL-C: high-density cholesterol; MDA: malondialdehyde; P: total phosphorus; SBO: soybean oil; SOD: superoxide dismutase; SUN: serum urea nitrogen; T-AOC: total antioxidant capacity; TC: total cholesterol; TG: total triglyceride; TP: tomato pomac

An Improved Lagrange Particle Swarm Optimization Algorithm and Its Application in Multiple Fault Diagnosis

The fault rate in equipment increases significantly along with the service life of the equipment, especially for multiple fault. Typically, the Bayesian theory is used to construct the model of faults, and intelligent algorithm is used to solve the model. Lagrangian relaxation algorithm can be adopted to solve multiple fault diagnosis models. But the mathematical derivation process may be complex, while the updating method for Lagrangian multiplier is limited and it may fall into a local optimal solution. The particle swarm optimization (PSO) algorithm is a global search algorithm. In this paper, an improved Lagrange-particle swarm optimization algorithm is proposed. The updating of the Lagrangian multipliers is with the PSO algorithm for global searching. The difference between the upper and lower bounds is proposed to construct the fitness function of PSO. The multiple fault diagnosis model can be solved by the improved Lagrange-particle swarm optimization algorithm. Experiment on a case study of sensor data-based multiple fault diagnosis verifies the effectiveness and robustness of the proposed method

Study on a New Type of Composite Powder Explosion Inhibitor Used to Suppress Underground Coal Dust Explosion

At present, the world is committed to the development of environmentally friendly, sustainable and industrial safety. The effective treatment of industrial solid waste can be applied in the field of industrial safety. It is one of the ways to apply industrial solid waste to industrial safety to modify industrial solid waste and combine active powder to prepare industrial solid waste-based composite powder explosion inhibitors and apply it to underground coal dust explosion. This paper introduces the modification and preparation methods of industrial solid waste, and analyzes the good explosion suppression effect and good economic benefit of industrial solid waste-based composite powder explosion inhibitors on coal dust explosion. In this paper, four kinds of industrial solid wastes (red mud, slag, fly ash and sludge) were modified, and the modified solid waste materials with good carrier characteristics were obtained. Combined with a variety of active powders (NaHCO3, KH2PO4 and Al(OH)3), the industrial solid waste-based composite powder explosion inhibitors were obtained by solvent-crystallization (WCSC) and dry coating by ball milling (DCBM). Those kinds of explosion inhibitors can suppress the explosion of pulverized coal in 40–50% of cases. Compared with the powder explosion inhibitor commonly used in industry, it has a lower production cost and better explosion suppression effect. Those kinds of explosion inhibitors have a good industrial application prospect

Effects of particle size and adaptation duration on the digestible and metabolizable energy contents and digestibility of various chemical constituents in wheat for finishing pigs determined by the direct or indirect method

Objective This experiment was conducted as a 3×2×2 factorial design to examine the effects of particle size (mean particle size of 331, 640, or 862 μm), evaluation method (direct vs indirect method) and adaptation duration (7 or 26 days) on the energy content and the apparent total tract digestibility (ATTD) of various chemical components in wheat when fed to finishing pigs. Methods Forty-two barrows (Duroc×Landrace×Yorkshire) with an initial body weight of 63.0±0.8 kg were individually placed in metabolic cages and randomly allotted to 1 of 7 diets with 6 pigs fed each diet. For the indirect method, the pigs were fed either a corn-soybean meal based basal diet or diets in which 38.94% of the basal diet was substituted by wheat of the different particle sizes. In the direct method, the diets contained 97.34% wheat with the different particle sizes. For both the direct and indirect methods, the pigs were adapted to their diets for either 7 or 26 days. Results A reduction in particle size linearly increased the digestible energy (DE) and metabolizable energy (ME) contents as well as the ATTD of gross energy, crude protein, organic matter, ether extract (EE) and acid detergent fiber (ADF) (p<0.05), and had a trend to increase the ATTD of dry matter of wheat (p = 0.084). The DE, ME contents, and ATTD of gross energy, crude protein, dry matter and organic matter were higher (p<0.05) when determined by the direct method, but the ATTD of ADF, EE, and neutral detergent fiber were higher when determined by the indirect method (p<0.05). Prolongation of the adaption duration decreased the ATTD of neutral detergent fiber (p<0.05) and had a trend to increase the ATTD of EE (p = 0.061). There were no interactions between particle size and the duration of the adaptation duration. The ATTD of EE in wheat was influenced by a trend of interaction between method and adaptation duration (p = 0.074). The ATTD of ADF and EE in wheat was influenced by an interaction between evaluation method and wheat particle size such that there were linear equations (p<0.01) about ATTD of ADF and EE when determined by the direct method but quadratic equations (p = 0.073 and p = 0.088, respectively) about ATTD of ADF and EE when determined by the indirect method. Conclusion Decreasing particle size can improve the DE and ME contents of wheat; both of the direct and indirect methods of evaluation are suitable for evaluating the DE and ME contents of wheat with different particle sizes; and an adaptation duration of 7 d is sufficient to evaluate DE and ME contents of wheat in finishing pigs