Effects of liquid metabolite combinations produced by Lactobacillus plantarum on growth performance, faeces characteristics, intestinal morphology and diarrhoea incidence in postweaning piglets

A study was carried out to investigate the effects of feeding liquid metabolite combinations produced by Lactobacillus plantarum strains on growth performance, diarrhoea incidence, faecal pH, microfloral counts, short-chain fatty acids (SCFA) and intestinal villus height and crypt depth of postweaning piglets. A total of 120 piglets (26 days old) were randomly assigned evenly into five treatment groups treated with same basal diet: (1) −ve control (free antibiotic); (2) + ve control (0.03% of chlortetracycline); (3) Com 1 (0.3% metabolite of TL1, RG11 and RI11 strains); (4) Com 2 (0.3% metabolite of TL1, RG14 and RS5 strains); (5) Com 3 (0.3% metabolite of RG11, RG14 and RI11 strains). After 5 weeks, the average daily feed intake was not significantly different (P > 0.05) among the treatments and feed conversion ratio was the highest (P < 0.05) in the −ve control group. In addition, diarrhoea incidence was reduced when piglets were fed with metabolite combinations. Faecal lactic acid bacteria (LAB) counts were significantly higher (P < 0.05) in metabolite treatment groups than in the groups without metabolites. However, the treatment of Com 2 metabolite resulted lower (P < 0.05) faecal pH and Enterobacteriaceae (ENT) than the −ve control group. In contrast, total faecal SCFA of Com 2 were significantly higher (P < 0.05) than the −ve control group. The villus height of duodenum was higher (P < 0.05) in the + ve control and Com 2 groups as compared to −ve control group. The results obtained in this study showed that feeding metabolite combinations could improve growth performance, and increase the population of gut LAB and faecal SCFA of postweaning piglets

Assessing the transferability of a hybrid Taguchi-objective function method to optimize image segmentation for detecting and counting cave roosting birds using terrestrial laser scanning data

As far back as early 15th century during the reign of the Ming Dynasty (1368 to 1634 AD), Gomantong cave in Sabah (Malaysia) has been known as one of the largest roosting sites for wrinkle-lipped bats (Chaerephon plicata) and swiftlet birds (Aerodramus maximus and Aerodramus fuciphagus) in very large colonies. Until recently, no study has been done to quantify or estimate the colony sizes of these inhabitants in spite of the grave danger posed to this avifauna by human activities and potential habitat loss to postspeleogenetic processes. This paper evaluates the transferability of a hybrid optimization image analysis-based method developed to detect and count cave roosting birds. The method utilizes high-resolution terrestrial laser scanning intensity image. First, segmentation parameters were optimized by integrating objective function and the statistical Taguchi methods. Thereafter, the optimized parameters were used as input into the segmentation and classification processes using two images selected from Simud Hitam (lower cave) and Simud Putih (upper cave) of the Gomantong cave. The result shows that the method is capable of detecting birds (and bats) from the image for accurate population censusing. A total number of 9998 swiftlet birds were counted from the first image while 1132 comprising of both bats and birds were obtained from the second image. Furthermore, the transferability evaluation yielded overall accuracies of 0.93 and 0.94 (area under receiver operating characteristic curve) for the first and second image, respectively, with p value of 0.0001 at 95% confidence level. The findings indicate that the method is not only efficient for the detection and counting cave birds for which it was developed for but also useful for counting bats; thus, it can be adopted in any cave

Induction of a robust immune response against avian influenza virus following transdermal inoculation with H5-DNA vaccine formulated in modified dendrimer-based delivery system in mouse model

Azadeh Bahadoran,1,2 Mehdi Ebrahimi,3 Swee Keong Yeap,1 Nikoo Safi,1 Hassan Moeini,4 Mohd Hair-Bejo,1,5 Mohd Zobir Hussein,6 Abdul Rahman Omar1,5 1Institute of Bioscience, Universiti Putra Malaysia, UPM, Serdang, 2Department of Microbiology, Faculty of Medicine, University of Malaya, Kuala Lumpur, 3Department of Veterinary Preclinical Sciences, Universiti Putra Malaysia, UPM, Serdang, Malaysia; 4German Cancer Research Center, Heidelberg, Germany; 5Department of Veterinary Pathology and Microbiology, Universiti Putra Malaysia, UPM, 6Advanced Technology Institute, Universiti Putra Malaysia, UPM, Serdang, Malaysia Abstract: This study was aimed to evaluate the immunogenicity of recombinant plasmid deoxyribonucleic acid (DNA), pBud-H5-green fluorescent protein (GFP)-interferon-regulatory factor (IRF)3 following delivery using polyamidoamine (PAMAM) dendrimer and transactivator of transcription (TAT)-conjugated PAMAM dendrimer as well as the effect of IRF3 as the genetic adjuvant. BALB/c mice were vaccinated transdermally with pBud-H5-GFP, PAMAM/pBud-H5-GFP, TAT-PAMAM/pBud-H5-GFP, and TAT-PAMAM/pBud-H5-GFP-IRF3. The expression analysis of H5 gene from the blood by using quantitative real-time reverse transcriptase polymerase chain reaction confirmed the ability of PAMAM dendrimer as a carrier for gene delivery, as well as the ability of TAT peptide to enhance the delivery efficiency of PAMAM dendrimer. Mice immunized with modified PAMAM by TAT peptide showed higher hemagglutination inhibition titer, and larger CD3+/CD4+ T cells and CD3+/CD8+ T&nbsp;cells population, as well as the production of cytokines, namely, interferon (IFN)-&gamma;, interleukin (IL)-2, IL-15, IL-12, IL-6, and tumor necrosis factor-&alpha; compared with those immunized with native PAMAM. These results suggest that the function of TAT peptide as a cell-penetrating peptide is able to enhance the gene delivery, which results in rapid distribution of H5 in the tissues of the immunized mice. Furthermore, pBud-H5-GFP co-expressing IRF3 as a genetic adjuvant demonstrated the highest hemagglutination inhibition titer besides larger CD3+/CD4+ and CD3+/CD8+ T cells population, and strong Th1-like cytokine responses among all the systems tested. In conclusion, TAT-PAMAM dendrimer-based delivery system with IRF3 as a genetic adjuvant is an attractive transdermal DNA vaccine delivery system utilized to evaluate the efficacy of the developed DNA vaccine in inducing protection during challenge with virulent H5N1 virus. Keywords: influenza virus, DNA vaccine, vaccine delivery, dendrimer, TAT peptide&nbsp