Background: Duck circovirus (DuCV) infections commonly induce immunosuppression and secondary infections in ducks, resulting in significant economic losses in the duck breeding industry. Currently, effective vaccines and treatments for DuCV have been lacking. Therefore, rapid, specific, and sensitive detection methods are crucial for preventing and controlling DuCV.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFIt is well known that the common chimpanzee, as both the closest living relative to humans and a facultative bipedal, has the capability of bipedal standing but cannot do so fully upright. Accordingly, they have been of exceeding significance in elucidating the evolution of human bipedalism. There are many reasons why the common chimpanzee can only stand with its hips-knees bent, such as the distally oriented long ischial tubercle and the almost absent lumbar lordosis.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFSeveral outbreaks of duck hepatitis A virus type 1 (DHAV-1), which were characterized by yellow coloration and hemorrhage in pancreatic tissues, have occurred in China. The causative agent is called pancreatitis-associated DHAV-1. The mechanisms involved in pancreatitis-associated DHAV-1 infection are still unclear.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFUsing an ORF1b-based astrovirus-specfic reverse transcription (RT)-PCR assay, a novel astrovirus-like was detected from domestic geese in China. Pairwise comparisons and phylogenetic analyzes suggested that a novel group of goose astrovirus, different with previously known astroviruses in the genus Avastrovirus, was found circulating in geese. This study has expanded our understanding about the role of domestic waterfowls as reservoirs for diverse astroviruses.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFPreeclampsia (PE) is a serious pregnancy-related syndrome, which is characterized by gestational hypertension and proteinuria. The microRNA-93 (miR-93) is upregulated in the maternal plasma of patients with PE. However, the functional role of miR-93 in PE remains unknown.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFA restriction fragment length polymorphism combined with direct PCR technique to differentiate goose and Muscovy duck parvoviruses (GPV and MDPV) was developed based on comparison of the NS gene of GPV and MDPV. Both GPV and MDPV genomic DNA can be amplified with 641 bp using the specific PCR primers. The PCR fragments can be cut into 463 bp and 178 bp only in the case of MDPV-derived PCR products, whereas the GPV-derived PCR products cannot.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFBackground: The hematopoietically expressed homeobox (HHEX) gene is an important determinant of mammalian heart development. This study aimed to identify the potential mutations of the gene in Chinese patients with congenital heart disease (CHD).
Methods: We collected 296 CHD patients and 200 controls, and classified the cardiac deformities.
A virulent Riemerella anatipestifer bacteriophage, RAP44, belonging to the Siphoviridae family of tailed phages, was previously isolated from feces of healthy Muscovy ducks in China. A complete genomic sequence analysis indicates that the phage's genome consists of a linear, double-stranded DNA molecule of 49,329 nucleotides. Eighty open reading frames (ORF) were identified.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFTo demonstrate the phylogenetic evolution, the molecular characteristics of the motif of HA protein cleavage site and the varieties at the receptor binding sites of the hemagglutinin gene of the duck-origin H9N2 subtype avian influenza viruses, sequence alignment and phylogenetic analysis were performed by MEGA 4.1 Neighbor-Joining method..
View Article and Find Full Text PDFDuck circovirus (DuCV), a potential immunosuppressive virus, was investigated in Southern China from March 2006 to December 2009 by using a polymerase chain reaction (PCR) based method. In this study, a total of 138 sick or dead duck samples from 18 different farms were examined with an average DuCV infection rate of ∼35%. It was found that ducks between the ages of 40∼60 days were more susceptible to DuCV.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFTo reveal the molecular biological characteristics of genome of circovirus in infected ducks, two nucleotide fragments were amplified by overlapping PCRs using DNA extracted from various tissues of ducks. After they had been assembled together, the nucleotide components, the genome organization and the phylogenetic scale of the sequence were analyzed. The results showed that the obtained sequence is a circular DNA with a total length of 1995nt.
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