Unlabelled: This study aimed to explore the knowledge and attitudes of livestock farmers from the United Kingdom regarding agroforestry planning and management issues. The farmers (n = 48) answered an online survey with demographic, open, closed and Likert scale questions. Almost half of the participants said they need more information to successfully plan and manage an agroforestry system, and self-reported low knowledge on management practices related to trees.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFAcquired or de novo resistance to poly (ADP-ribose) polymerase inhibitors (PARPi) is a major challenge to ovarian cancer treatment. Therefore, strategies to overcome PARPi resistance are critical to improve prognosis. The purpose of this study is to evaluate whether inhibition of ADAM17 sensitizes ovarian cancer to treatment with olaparib, a PARPi, thereby bypassing resistance mechanisms and improving treatment response.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFIntroduction: Osteoporosis (OP) is a bone disease linked to low bone mass and heightened fracture risk. Apical periodontitis (AP) is an inflammation of the apical periodontium, visible on radiographs, often associated with infection or necrosis of the root canal system. Both conditions, AP and OP, share inflammation and ageing as common factors, warranting exploration of their potential interactions.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFOver 50% of children with a parent with severe mental illness will develop mental illness by early adulthood. However, intergenerational transmission of risk for mental illness in one's children is insufficiently considered in clinical practice, nor is it sufficiently utilised into diagnostics and care for children of ill parents. This leads to delays in diagnosing young offspring and missed opportunities for protective actions and resilience strengthening.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFKeeping horses in single stalls can lead to the development of abnormal and stereotypic behaviors (ASB). Opportunities for social interactions and stall architecture can influence behavior. The current study aimed to identify how three different stall architectures influenced time-budget and physiological parameters in horses.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFPolyethylene terephthalate (PET) is a commodity polymer known to globally contaminate marine and terrestrial environments. Today, around 80 bacterial and fungal PET-active enzymes (PETases) are known, originating from four bacterial and two fungal phyla. In contrast, no archaeal enzyme had been identified to degrade PET.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFInvestigating the cross talk of different omics layers is crucial to understand molecular pathomechanisms of metabolic diseases like obesity. Here, we present a large-scale association meta-analysis of genome-wide whole blood and peripheral blood mononuclear cell (PBMC) gene expressions profiled with Illumina HT12v4 microarrays and metabolite measurements from dried blood spots (DBS) characterized by targeted liquid chromatography tandem mass spectrometry (LC-MS/MS) in three large German cohort studies with up to 7706 samples. We found 37,295 associations comprising 72 amino acids (AA) and acylcarnitine (AC) metabolites (including ratios) and 8579 transcripts.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFFree choice forage could be the best option regarding horses' welfare but can lead to increased body weight (BW), and waste of hay. Automatic box feeders (BF) and slow feeders (SF) decrease food waste, but it is unknown how these affect the horses' time-budget (TB). This study compared the effects of feeding free choice hay (FC), to a SF and an automated BF on the horses' cortisol circadian rhythm (CCR) and behavior by 24-hours continuous behavioral sampling (CBS).
View Article and Find Full Text PDFPolyethylene terephthalate (PET) is a widely used synthetic polymer and known to contaminate marine and terrestrial ecosystems. Only few PET-active microorganisms and enzymes (PETases) are currently known, and it is debated whether degradation activity for PET originates from promiscuous enzymes with broad substrate spectra that primarily act on natural polymers or other bulky substrates, or whether microorganisms evolved their genetic makeup to accepting PET as a carbon source. Here, we present a predicted diene lactone hydrolase designated PET40, which acts on a broad spectrum of substrates, including PET.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFMaximum entropy methods (MEMs) determine posterior distributions by combining experimental data with prior information. MEMs are frequently used to reconstruct conformational ensembles of molecular systems for experimental information and initial molecular ensembles. We performed time-resolved Förster resonance energy transfer (FRET) experiments to probe the interdye distance distributions of the lipase-specific foldase Lif in the state, which likely has highly flexible, disordered, and/or ordered structural elements.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFMicrobial communities respond to temperature with physiological adaptation and compositional turnover. Whether thermal selection of enzymes explains marine microbiome plasticity in response to temperature remains unresolved. By quantifying the thermal behaviour of seven functionally-independent enzyme classes (esterase, extradiol dioxygenase, phosphatase, beta-galactosidase, nuclease, transaminase, and aldo-keto reductase) in native proteomes of marine sediment microbiomes from the Irish Sea to the southern Red Sea, we record a significant effect of the mean annual temperature (MAT) on enzyme response in all cases.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFDoes the silvopastoral system (SPS) promote a satisfactory thermal environment for dairy cows to perform their natural behaviors and perform a suitable thermoregulatory function? To answer this, peer-reviewed articles, written in English and evaluating the effects of silvopastoral systems on thermal environment, dairy cows' behavior, and physiology were used in this systematic review; additionally, a bibliometric approach was performed. Web of Science and Google Scholar were used to compile the literature. The resulting articles (1448) underwent a 4-step appraisal process and resulted in 19 articles that fitted our inclusion criteria.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFBackground: Medical results generated by European CE Marking for In Vitro Diagnostic or in-house tests should be traceable to higher order reference measurement systems (RMS), such as International Federation of Clinical Chemistry and Laboratory Medicine (IFCC)-endorsed reference measurement procedures (RMPs) and reference materials. Currently, serum apolipoprotein (a) [apo(a)] is recognized as a novel risk factor for cardiovascular risk assessment and patient management. The former RMS for serum apo(a) is no longer available; consequently, an International System of Units (SI)-traceable, ideally multiplexed, and sustainable RMS for apo(a) is needed.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFInositols (cyclohexanehexols) comprise nine isomeric cyclic sugar alcohols, several of which occur in all domains of life with various functions. Many bacteria can utilize inositols as carbon and energy sources via a specific pathway involving inositol dehydrogenases (IDHs) as the first step of catabolism. The microbial cell factory Corynebacterium glutamicum can grow with -inositol as a sole carbon source.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFApolipoprotein E (apoE) occurs on the majority of plasma lipoproteins and plays a major role in the lipid metabolism in the periphery and in the central nervous system. ApoE is a polymorphic protein with three common isoforms, apoE2, apoE3 and apoE4, derived from respective alleles ε2, ε3 and ε4. The aim of this study was to develop a sample pretreatment protocol combined with rapid mass spectrometry (MS)-based assay for simultaneous apolipoprotein profiling and apoE phenotype identification.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFIn times of a constantly growing world population and increasing demand for food, sustainable agriculture is crucial. The rainfastness of plant protection agents is of pivotal importance to reduce the amount of applied nutrients, herbicides, and fungicides. As a result of protective agent wash-off, plant protection is lost, and soils and groundwater are severely polluted.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFA variety of atherosclerosis and cardiovascular disease (ASCVD) phenotypes are tightly linked to changes in the cardiac energy metabolism that can lead to a loss of metabolic flexibility and to unfavorable clinical outcomes. We conducted an association analysis of 31 ASCVD phenotypes and 97 whole blood amino acids, acylcarnitines and derived ratios in the LIFE-Adult ( = 9646) and LIFE-Heart ( = 5860) studies, respectively. In addition to hundreds of significant associations, a total of 62 associations of six phenotypes were found in both studies.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFThe objective of this study was to evaluate the predatory activity of the nematophagous fungus Duddingtonia flagrans on infective larvae of gastrointestinal nematodes from dairy heifers in different conditions (shaded and sunny) of a silvopastoral system (SPS) on an agroecological farm. Ten Jersey heifers were divided into two groups: treated (received pellets containing fungus); and control (received pellets without fungus). Twelve hours after fungus administration, faeces samples were collected for in vitro efficacy tests.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFResearchers believe that the development and prevalence of abnormal behaviors in horses may be caused by several environmental and biological factors, and the literature offers numerous reports that discuss the causes and effects of stereotypies in these animals. In this light, this study aimed to conduct a systematic review and meta-analysis of the scientific literature, summarizing the main risk factors associated with the development of abnormal behaviors in horses. The searches were conducted over the course of four years in Portuguese, Spanish, and English.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFBackground And Aims: The association of plasma trimethylamine N-oxide (TMAO) with atherosclerotic cardiovascular disease (ASCVD), diabetes mellitus (DM) and its determinants, as well as the role of TMAO as a predictor for short and long-term mortality, is still under discussion. We investigated associations between four plasma metabolites of the TMAO pathway and different clinical manifestations of atherosclerosis, diabetes determinants, and risk of short and long-term mortality in patients with stable ASCVD, acute myocardial infarction (AMI), cardiogenic shock (CS), and DM in three independent cohorts.
Methods: TMAO and its dietary precursors were simultaneously quantified by liquid chromatography-tandem mass spectrometry in a total of 2655 participants of the German Leipzig Research Center for Civilization Diseases (LIFE)-Heart study, LIFE-Adult study, and the European Culprit Lesion Only PCI versus Multivessel PCI in Cardiogenic Shock (CULPRIT-SHOCK) multicenter trial.
The aim of this Research Communication was to apply the data mining technique to classify which environmental factors have the potential to motivate dairy cows to access natural shade. We defined two different areas at the silvopastoral system: shaded and sunny. Environmental factors and the frequency that dairy cows used each area were measured during four days, for 8 h each day.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFBiological control is a strategy to decrease parasitic populations, and the action takes place through natural antagonists in the environment. We studied the predatory activity of the fungus Duddingtonia flagrans in infective larvae (L3) of gastrointestinal nematodes after gastrointestinal transit. Ten heifers were divided into two groups: treated (animals received pellets containing fungus) and control (animals received pellets without fungus).
View Article and Find Full Text PDFChemotherapy resistance is a major challenge in ovarian cancer (OvCa). Thus, novel treatment combinations are highly warranted. However, many promising drug candidates tested in two-dimensional (2D) cell culture have not proved successful in the clinic.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFThe aim of this study was to evaluate the influence of microclimate on thermal comfort and dairy cows' behavior in different pasture systems during the winter of a subtropical climate. The experiment was carried out in June and August 2020, covering the winter season in the southern hemisphere. Local microclimatic variables and cows' behaviors were compared in two conditions (shaded and sunny), in three pasture systems: silvopastoral system with disperse trees (SPSdisp), silvopastoral system with trees along the border fences (SPSfen), and treeless pasture (TLP).
View Article and Find Full Text PDFLying behavior is an important indicator of the cows' welfare and health. In this study, we evaluate the effect of the physical environment on dairy cows' behaviors raised on a silvopastoral system through a predictive model. There was a difference (p<0.
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