Microbial contamination of harvested colostrum on Czech dairy farms.

The objective of this study was to perform a quantitative and qualitative evaluation of microbial contamination of harvested colostrum on 39 Czech dairy farms. The study identified the proportion of colostrum samples that met the recommended goals for total plate count (TPC), total coliform count (TCC), and gram-negative noncoliform count (NCC), and evaluated the effect of the farm, breed, parity, season of the year, time of calving, and colostrum volume on these 3 microbiological parameters. Colostrum samples from cows (n = 1,241; 57.

Survey of disbudding practice on Czech dairy farms.

Disbudding is a routine practice in many dairy herds due to the effort to decrease the risk of injuries. Although the disbudding practice is regulated, it can vary among farms. The variation may be caused by many factors, such as herd size or type of breed, but also by farmers' perception of pain caused by disbudding.

Identification of AHK2- and AHK3-like cytokinin receptors in Brassica napus reveals two subfamilies of AHK2 orthologues.

Cytokinin (CK) signalling is known to play key roles in the regulation of plant growth and development, crop yields, and tolerance to both abiotic stress and pathogen defences, but the mechanisms involved are poorly characterized in dicotyledonous crops. Here the identification and functional characterization of sensor histidine kinases homologous to Arabidopsis CK receptors AHK2 and AHK3 in winter oilseed rape are presented. Five CHASE-containing His kinases were identified in Brassica napus var.

Cloning, expression, purification, crystallization and preliminary X-ray diffraction analysis of AHP2, a signal transmitter protein from Arabidopsis thaliana.

Histidine-containing phosphotransfer proteins from Arabidopsis thaliana (AHP1-5) act as intermediates between sensor histidine kinases and response regulators in a signalling system called multi-step phosphorelay (MSP). AHP proteins mediate and potentially integrate various MSP-based signalling pathways (e.g.

Structure and binding specificity of the receiver domain of sensor histidine kinase CKI1 from Arabidopsis thaliana.

Multistep phosphorelay (MSP) signaling mediates responses to a variety of important stimuli in plants. In Arabidopsis MSP, the signal is transferred from sensor histidine kinase (HK) via histidine phosphotransfer proteins (AHP1-AHP5) to nuclear response regulators. In contrast to ancestral two-component signaling in bacteria, protein interactions in plant MSP are supposed to be rather nonspecific.