Publications by authors named "Junxian Zhu"

To assess the impact of tannic acid (TA) on the hepatic health of the Chinese soft-shelled turtle, the individuals were fed diets containing 0 (CG), 0.5, 1, 2, and 4 g/kg TA diets for 60 days (0 hps). Afterwards, the turtles were challenged with 15 °C cold stress for 24 h (24 hps) and then recovered to 28 °C for 24 h (48 hps).

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The Chinese soft-shelled turtle (), as a type of warm-water reptile, could be induced to massive death by sharp temperature decline. Hence, the mechanism of spleen tissue responding to cold stress in the was investigated. The present results showed that the superoxide dismutase (SOD) activity declined from 4 to 16 days post-cold-stress (dps), while the catalase (CAT) and glutathione peroxidase (GSH-Px) activities increased, from 4 to 8 dps in the 14 °C (T14) and 7 °C (T7) stress groups.

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Background: In randomized clinical trials (RCTs) with non-compliance, evaluating the causal effects of interventions would lead to a more precise estimation of treatment effect when the estimand of interest is the effect of treatment amongst compliers. While there is a large body of literature addressing the issue of non-compliance for continuous, binary, and time-to-event outcomes, this issue is seldom discussed for ordinal outcomes.

Methods: In this paper, we consider one-sided non-compliance.

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To investigate the effect of tannic acid (TA) on the growth, disease resistance, and intestinal health of Chinese soft-shelled turtles, individual turtles were fed with 0 g/kg (CG), 0.5 g/kg, 1 g/kg, 2 g/kg, and 4 g/kg TA diets for 98 days. Afterwards, the turtles' disease resistance was tested using .

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The Chinese soft-shelled turtle (), a type of warm-water reptile, is frequently chosen as the model animal to understand how organisms respond to environmental stressors. However, the responsive mechanism of to natural cold stress is unclear, especially in terms of metabolic pattern and molecular pathways. Herein, plasma biochemical, hepatic morphological, apoptotic, transcriptomic, and metabolomic detection methods were performed to investigate the response of to acute cold stress.

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The Chinese soft-shelled turtle () is an economically important species in aquaculture, and its growth pattern is characterized by significant sexual dimorphism. However, the underlying molecular mechanisms of this phenomenon have mostly been investigated in the gonadal tissues of , and there are no articles on sex differentiation from the brain of . Here, we analyzed transcriptomes of the brains of adult male and female using high-throughput Illumina sequencing technology, establishing a set of differential genes and differential transcription factors.

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Sn-10Bi low-bismuth-content solder alloy provides a potential alternative to the currently used Sn-Ag-Cu series due to its lower cost, excellent ductility, and strengthening resulting from the Bi solid solution and precipitation. This study primarily investigates the interfacial evolution and shear strength characteristics of Sn-10Bi joints on a Ni/Au surface finish during the as-soldered and subsequent isothermal aging processes. To improve the joint performance, a 0.

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Introduction: , a bacterium widely distributed in the natural environment, causes multiple diseases in various animals. Exploring the mechanism of the host defense against can help develop efficient strategies against infection.

Methods: Herein, we investigated the temporal influence of A.

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The DKK family is a canonical small family of WNT antagonists. Though recent studies have suggested that the DKK gene family may be involved in sex differentiation in , there are still a lot of things about the DKK gene family that we do not know. In this study, we used bioinformatics methods to identify members of the DKK gene family in and analyzed their phylogeny, covariance, gene structure, structural domains, promoter conserved sites, signal peptides, gonadal transcription factors, transcriptional profiles, and tissue expression profiles.

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Male and female Chinese soft-shelled turtles () have sex-dimorphic growth patterns, and males have higher commercial value because of their larger size and thicker calipash. Thus, developing sex-specific markers is beneficial to studies on all-male breeding in . Here, we developed an accurate and efficient workflow for the screening of sex-specific sequences with ZW or XY sex determination systems.

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A feature of the Chinese soft-shelled turtle (Pelodiscus sinensis) is seasonal spermatogenesis; however, the underlying molecular mechanism is not well clarified. Here, we firstly cloned and characterized P. sinensis DKKL1, and then performed comparative genomic studies, expression analysis, and functional validation.

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Hibernation in turtle species is an adaptive survival strategy to colder winter conditions or food restrictions. However, the mechanisms underlying seasonal adaptions remain unclear. In the present study, we collected hemocytes from and compared the molecular signature of these cells between the active state and hibernation period based on single-cell RNA sequencing (scRNA-seq) analysis.

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Offspring size-number trade-off is a critical component of life-history theory and is important for further understanding the reproductive strategies of animals. The relationship between this trade-off and maternal size has been explored in several turtle species, except for the Asian yellow pond turtle, . To investigate how the maternal condition affects offspring size and number, we explored the relationships among the maternal body size and the number and size of cultured hatchlings using a 4-year dataset.

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Bone morphogenetic proteins (BMPs) play a crucial role in bone formation and differentiation. Recent RNA-Seq results suggest that BMPs may be involved in the sex differentiation of , yet more relevant studies about BMPs in are lacking. Herein, we identified BMP gene family members, analyzed the phylogeny, collinear relationship, scaffold localization, gene structures, protein structures, transcription factors and dimorphic expression by using bioinformatic methods based on genomic and transcriptomic data of .

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Spats1 (spermatogenesis-associated, serinerich 1) has been characterized as a male-biased gene which acts an important role in the germ cell differentiation of mammals. Nevertheless, the function of Spats1 in the Chinese soft-shelled turtle (P. sinensis) has not yet been reported.

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In aquaculture, the Chinese soft-shelled turtle () is an economically important species with remarkable gender dimorphism in its growth patterns. However, the underlying molecular mechanisms of this phenomenon have not been elucidated well. Here, we conducted a whole-transcriptome analysis of the female and male gonads of .

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HMGB2, a member of the high-mobility group (HMG) proteins, was identified as a male-biased gene and plays a crucial role in the germ cells differentiation of mammals. However, its role in spermatogenesis of turtle is still poorly understood. Here, we cloned the Pelodiscus sinensis HMGB2 and analyzed its expression profile in different tissues and in testis at different developmental ages.

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Most vertebrates exhibit sexual dimorphisms in size, colour, behaviour, physiology and many others. The Chinese soft-shelled turtle (Pelodiscus sinensis) male individuals reach a larger size than females which produce significant economic implications in aquaculture. However, the mechanisms of sex determination and plastic patterns of sex differentiation in P.

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The crucial roles of miRNAs in regulating animal growth, development, and disease resistance have been extensively reported, but their roles in relation to the reproductive capacity of aquatic animals (numbers of eggs laid and hatchlings), especially reptiles, remain unclear. In this study, high-throughput sequencing technology was used to screen miRNAs related to reproductive capacity based on the construction of a cDNA library of ovaries from higher-fecundity (HF) and lower-fecundity (LF) M. mutica.

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In recent years, a number of literatures published large-scale genome-wide association studies (GWASs) for human diseases or traits while adjusting for other heritable covariate. However, it is known that these GWASs are biased, which may lead to biased genetic estimates or even false positives. In this study, we provide a method called "BTOB" which extends the biased GWAS to bivariate GWAS by integrating the summary association statistics from the biased GWAS and the GWAS for the adjusted heritable covariate.

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Best-subset selection aims to find a small subset of predictors, so that the resulting linear model is expected to have the most desirable prediction accuracy. It is not only important and imperative in regression analysis but also has far-reaching applications in every facet of research, including computer science and medicine. We introduce a polynomial algorithm, which, under mild conditions, solves the problem.

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The reproductive capacity (egg size and egg number) of most of oviparous animals, including the Asian yellow pond turtle (Mauremys mutica), is constrained by the maternal age and body size, but the mechanism determining the maternal reproductive ability remains unclear. To disclose how maternal age and size affect reproductive ability of M. mutica, we first identified the full-length cDNAs from estrogen receptor 1 (ESR1), bone morphogenetic protein receptor 1B (BMPR1B), and forkhead box L2 (FOXL2).

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Multiple correlated phenotypes are frequently collected in genome-wide association studies (GWASs), and a systematic, simultaneous analysis of multiple phenotypes can integrate the signals from single phenotypes, therefore increasing the power of detecting genetic signals. However, fundamental questions remain open, including the conditions and reasons under which the multivariate analysis is beneficial, how a highly significant signal arises in the multivariate analysis. To understand these issues, we propose to decompose the multivariate model into a series of simple univariate models.

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Common diseases including cancer are heterogeneous. It is important to discover disease subtypes and identify both shared and unique risk factors for different disease subtypes. The advent of high-throughput technologies enriches the data to achieve this goal, if necessary statistical methods are developed.

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