Gene Polymorphism and Racing Performance of Homing Pigeons.

Cryptochromes (CRY) are the family of proteins proposed as the putative magnetoreceptor molecules. In birds, among others in pigeons, CRY1 is widely expressed in a retina. Homing pigeons are known for their navigational abilities, and pigeon racing is a popular sport.

Association between Gene Polymorphism and Fatty Acid Composition in Milk of Dairy Cows.

Thyroid hormone-inducible hepatic protein is involved in the synthesis of fatty acids in the lactating mammary gland. Different variants of the gene that encodes this protein may be associated with its different activity. The primary aim of this study was to find polymorphism in the gene and estimate the relationship between individual genotypes and fatty acid composition in milk.

The effect of polymorphism in the gene on the fatty acid composition of bovine milk.

Polyunsaturated fatty acids (PUFAs) play a role in a wide variety of physiological processes. They are produced by a series of desaturation and elongation reactions. -6-desaturase is a membrane-bound enzyme that catalyzes the conversion of -linolenic acid (C18:3 -3) and linoleic acid (C18:2 -6) to stearidonic acid (18:4 -3) and -linolenic acid (18:3 -6).

The use of data mining methods for dystocia detection in Polish Holstein-Friesian Black-and-White cattle.

Objective: The aim of this study was to verify the usefulness of artificial neural networks (ANN), multivariate adaptive regression splines (MARS), naïve Bayes classifier (NBC), general discriminant analysis (GDA), and logistic regression (LR) for dystocia detection in Polish Holstein-Friesian Black-and-White heifers and cows and to indicate the most influential predictors of calving difficulty.

Methods: A total of 1,342 and 1,699 calving records including six categorical and four continuous predictors were used. Calving category (difficult vs easy or difficult, moderate and easy) was the dependent variable.

Nucleotide Substitution in 3' Arm of Bovine MIR-2467 in Five Cattle Breeds.

The T > C single nucleotide polymorphism (SNP) in the MIR2467 gene was investigated in order to confirm its presence in cattle genome and to check for possible differences in its genotype distribution among different breeds. Additional purpose of the study was to investigate in silico potential effect of that substitution on the structure and stability of precursor mir-2467. The study involved 634 individuals of five cattle breeds: Angus, Hereford, Holstein-Friesian, Jersey, and Limousin, which were genotyped using PCR-RFLP assay.