Analysis of DNA Methylation in Various Swine Tissues

DNA methylation is known to play an important role in regulating gene expression during biological development and tissue differentiation in eukaryotes. In this study, we used the fluorescence-labeled methylation-sensitive amplified polymorphism (F-MSAP) method to assess the extent and pattern of cytosine methylation in muscle, heart, liver, spleen, lung, kidney and stomach from the swine strain Laiwu, and we also examined specific methylation patterns in the seven tissues. In total, 96,371 fragments, each representing a recognition site cleaved by either or both EcoRI + HpaII and EcoRI + MspI, the HpaII and MspI are isoschizomeric enzymes, were amplified using 16 pairs of selective primers. A total of 50,094 sites were found to be methylated at cytosines in seven tissues. The incidence of DNA methylation was approximately 53.99% in muscle, 51.24% in the heart, 50.18% in the liver, 53.31% in the spleen, 51.97% in the lung, 51.15% in the kidney and 53.39% in the stomach, as revealed by the incidence of differential digestion. Additionally, differences in DNA methylation levels imply that such variations may be related to specific gene expression during tissue differentiation, growth and development. Three types of bands were generated in the F-MSAP profile, the total numbers of these three types of bands in the seven tissues were 46,277, 24,801 and 25,293, respectively

A review on assembly sequence planning and assembly line balancing optimisation using soft computing approaches

Assembly optimisation activities occur across development and production stages of manufacturing goods. Assembly Sequence Planning (ASP) and Assembly Line Balancing (ALB) problems are among the assembly optimisation. Both of these activities are classified as NP-hard. Several soft computing approaches using different techniques have been developed to solve ASP and ALB. Although these approaches do not guarantee the optimum solution, they have been successfully applied in many ASP and ALB optimisation works. This paper reported the survey on research in ASP and ALB that use soft computing approaches for the past 10years. To be more specific, only Simple Assembly Line Balancing Problem (SALBP) is considered for ALB. The survey shows that three soft computing algorithms that frequently used to solve ASP and ALB are Genetic Algorithm, Ant Colony Optimisation and Particle Swarm Optimisation. Meanwhile, the research in ASP and ALB is also progressing to the next level by integration of assembly optimisation activities across product development stages

A three-dimensional hexagonal fluorine-doped tin oxide nanocone array: a superior light harvesting electrode for high performance photoelectrochemical water splitting

<div> Photonic nanostructures hold great promise in promoting light harvesting. Here&nbsp;</div> <div> &nbsp;</div> <div> we report the first design and construction of a three-dimensional (3D) hexagonal&nbsp;</div> <div> &nbsp;</div> <div> nanocone array of fluorine-doped tin oxide (FTO) on glass as an excellent electrode&nbsp;</div> <div> &nbsp;</div> <div> for photoelectrochemical (PEC) water splitting. The PEC current density with&nbsp;</div> <div> &nbsp;</div> <div> suitably deposited Ti-doped hematite at 1.23 V vs. the reversible hydrogen electrode&nbsp;</div> <div> &nbsp;</div> <div> (RHE) was increased by 86% to 2.24 +/- 0.02 mA cm(-2) compared to that with the&nbsp;</div> <div> &nbsp;</div> <div> planar counterpart, mainly ascribable to the special light harvesting effect and the&nbsp;</div> <div> &nbsp;</div> <div> electrode surface area provided by 3D FTO. Upon the embedment of a gold layer to&nbsp;</div> <div> &nbsp;</div> <div> concentrate the incident light onto the hematite layer and the deposition of the&nbsp;</div> <div> &nbsp;</div> <div> Co-Pi catalyst with a modified procedure, the photocurrent experienced a large&nbsp;</div> <div> &nbsp;</div> <div> cathodic shift of onset potential by 360 mV and soared to a high value of 3.39 +/-&nbsp;</div> <div> &nbsp;</div> <div> 0.01 mA cm(-2) (at 1.23 V), yielding a power conversion efficiency of 0.70% at a&nbsp;</div> <div> &nbsp;</div> <div> potential as low as 0.88 V vs. RHE.&nbsp;</div