Publications by authors named "Ana Claudia Freitas"

Background: Heat stress has deleterious effects on physiological and performance traits in livestock. Within this context, using tropically adapted cattle breeds in pure herds or terminal crossbreeding schemes to explore heterosis is attractive for increasing animal production in warmer climate regions. This study aimed to identify biological processes, pathways, and potential biomarkers related to thermotolerance in Caracu, a tropically adapted beef cattle breed, by proteomic analysis of blood plasma.

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Article Synopsis
  • Scientists studied how beef cattle react to heat stress to help improve their health and productivity.
  • They took blood samples from the cattle during and after a hot period to see how many different proteins were present and how they changed.
  • They found several proteins that seemed important for the cattle's response to heat, which could help us understand and improve animal care in hot climates.
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Considering the importance of the diseases affecting the productive performance of animals in the dairy industry worldwide, it is necessary to implement tools that help to control and limit the occurrence of such diseases. As the increased somatic cell counts (SCC) are a direct expression of the inflammatory process, they are candidates to become the usual parameter for assessing udder health regarding milk quality and for monitoring mastitis incidences. Toll-Like Receptors are membrane proteins that play a key role in immunity, recognizing pathogens and, subsequently, activating immune responses.

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Aim: The study investigated the cortical activity changes and time production task performance induced by changes in motion speed of a non-immersive 3D virtual stimulus.

Material And Methods: Twenty-one individuals were participated in the crossover study with the visual-time reproduction task under three-speed conditions: original, slow and fast virtual stimulus. In addition, the electroencephalographic analysis of the theta band power in the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex was done simultaneously with time production task execution.

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Background: Twenty-five phenotypes were measured as indicators of bull fertility (1099 Brahman and 1719 Tropical Composite bulls). Measurements included sperm morphology, scrotal circumference, and sperm chromatin phenotypes such as DNA fragmentation and protamine deficiency. We estimated the heritability of these phenotypes and carried out genome-wide association studies (GWAS) within breed, using the bovine high-density chip, to detect quantitative trait loci (QTL).

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This study identified polymorphisms in the DGAT1 gene in Murrah buffaloes and investigated the associations to milk production and quality traits (milk, fat and protein yields and percentages, somatic cell count). Genomic DNA was extracted from hair follicles collected from the tail of 196 females. Three SNPs were identified in DGAT1 gene by sequencing.

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Article Synopsis
  • Protein JY-1 is important for bovine reproductive health and early embryo development, affecting pregnancy outcomes.
  • The study identified seven single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) in exon 3 of the JY-1 gene, including one that changes proline to leucine at position 163.
  • Genotyping of SNPs 163, 281, 321, and 679 in 297 Nellore heifers showed no correlation between JY-1 haplotypes and the examined traits at a significance level of 5%.
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