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Background: Piroplasmosis is a common and prevalent tick‐borne disease that affects equids. Objectives: To determine the infection and molecular characteristics of the piroplasms in donkeys from Xinjiang, northwestern China, we undertook a cross sectional study by collecting representative samples across several counties within the region. Methods: A total of 344 blood samples were collected from adult domestic donkeys from 13 counties in Xinjiang. PCR was conducted to test for T. equi and B. caballi in the blood samples based on the equine merozoite antigen‐1 (Ema‐1) gene and the 48 kDa rhoptry protein (BC48) gene, respectively. Results: Sixteen blood samples tested positive for piroplasms and the overall infection rate was 4.7% (16/344). Seven of the 13 counties were positive for piroplasms. Among the 16 piroplasm‐positive samples, 15 were singly infected with T. equi with an infection rate of 4.4% (15/344), and coinfection with T. equi and B. caballi was detected in one sample (0.3%, 1/344) from Wushi. Four T. equi sequence genotypes were identified and grouped into different branches of the evolutionary trees. Conclusion: These findings suggest that the infection rate of piroplasms is low in domestic donkeys in southern Xinjiang and that T. equi genotypes have a regional distribution. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

To study the presence of Giardia duodenalis in Xinjiang, northwest China, we collected 801 fecal specimens from seven large-scale pig farms and screened them using PCR targeting the SSU rRNA gene. Twenty-one (2.6%) of the specimens from five farms were G. duodenalis-positive, with a significant difference in prevalence among different farms (0–8.7%) (p 0.05). Sequence analysis of the SSU rRNA gene revealed that the 21 G. duodenalis strains belonged to three assemblages: A (n = 2), B (n = 16), and E (n = 3). Assemblage B was the predominant assemblage and was widely distributed in all G. duodenalis-positive farms and age groups. All G. duodenalis-positive specimens were further assayed at the β-giardin (bg), glutamate dehydrogenase (gdh), and triosephosphate isomerase (tpi) genes, and two tpi, four gdh, and two bg sequences were identified. These data indicate that pigs may be a zoonotic risk and can potentially spread G. duodenalis infection from animals to humans.

In this paper, we investigate optimal frame-selection algorithms based on dynamic programming for delivering stored variable bit rate (VBR) video under both bandwidth and buffer size constraints. Our objective is to find a feasible set of frames that can maximize the video's accumulated motion values without violating any constraint. It is well known that dynamic programming has high complexity. In this research, we propose to eliminate nonoptimal intermediate frame states, which can effectively reduce the complexity of dynamic programming. Moreover, we propose a reverse frame selection (RFS) algorithm, where the selection starts from the last frame and ends at the first frame. Compared with the conventional dynamic programming-based forward frame selection, the RFS is able to find all of the optimal results for different preloads in one round. We further extend the RFS scheme to solve the problem of frame selection for VBR channels. In particular, we first perform the RFS algorithm offline, and the complexity is modest and scalable with the aids of frame stuffing and nonoptimal state elimination. During online streaming, we only need to retrieve the optimal frame-selection path from the pregenerated offline results, and it can be applied to any VBR channels as long as the VBR channels can be modeled as piecewise CBR channels. Experimental results show good performance of our proposed algorithms. Index Terms--Bandwidth smoothing, dynamic programming, motion awareness, optimal frame selection, variable bit rate (VBR) channels, VBR video delivery.

Hydrogen sulfide (H 2 S) is a common toxic gas in chicken houses that endangers the health of poultry. Harbin has a cold climate in winter, and the conflict between heat preservation and ventilation in poultry houses is obvious. In this study, we investigated the H 2 S content in chicken houses during winter in Harbin and found that the H 2 S concentration exceeded the national standard in individual chicken houses. Then, a model of H 2 S exposure was established in an environmental simulation chamber. We also developed a NaHS exposure model of chicken peripheral blood lymphocytes in vitro. Proteomics analysis was used to reveal the toxicology of thymus injury in broilers, the FOXO signaling pathway was determined to be significantly enriched, ROS bursts and JNK/MST1/FOXO1 pathway activation induced by H 2 S exposure were detected, and ROS played an important switch role in the JNK/MST1/FOXO1 pathway. In addition, H 2 S exposure-induced thymus cell death involved immune dysregulation. Overall, the present study adds data for H 2 S contents in chicken houses, provides new findings for the mechanism of H 2 S poisoning and reveals a new regulatory pathway in immune injury., (Copyright © 2021 The Authors. Published by Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.)

Copper (Cu) is a common environmental pollutant in nature. Cu-poisoning can cause liver damage and erythrocytes hemolysis. To evaluate the effect of CuSO 4 poisoning on the morphological and functional characteristics of goat red blood cells. Five 10-14-month-old goats were selected for jugular vein blood sampling to obtain erythrocytes, and then the erythrocytes were processed with different concentrations (0, 10, 20, 30, 40 and 50 μmol/L) of CuSO 4 for 48 h, and 40 μmol/L doses CuSO 4 incubated for different time (12, 24, 36, 48 and 60 h) to process erythrocytes. We observed the changes in erythrocyte morphology through scanning electron microscopy, and detected the antioxidant function and activities of three ATPases. Additionally, biological properties were examined from the perspectives of phospholipids and membrane protein components, permeability fragility, and fluidity in erythrocytes. We found that after CuSO 4 treatment, the antioxidant capacity of erythrocytes decreased, which was manifested as increased MDA content and decreased CuZn-SOD and GSH-Px activities (p < 0.05). In addition, we also found that erythrocyte fluidity decreased, osmotic fragility increased, membrane phospholipid percentage and protein composition changes abnormally, and Na + /K + -ATPase , Mg 2+ -ATPase and Ca 2+ -ATPase activities decreased (p < 0.05). From the results, it can be concluded that CuSO 4 exposure causes hemolysis of goat erythrocytes through oxidative stress to the structure and function of erythrocytes, showing a dose-time effect., (Copyright © 2020 The Authors. Published by Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.)

MicroRNAs (miRNAs) are a class of short endogenous, single-stranded, non-coding small RNA molecules, about 19-25 nucleotides in length that regulate gene expression at the translation level and influence many physiological process, such apoptosis, metabolism, signal transduction, and occurrence and development of diseases. In this study, we constructed a library from the ovine luteal phase ovary by using next-generation sequencing technology (Solexa high-throughput sequencing technique) and identified 267 novel miRNAs by bioinformatics. One of the novel miRNAs (ovis&#95;aries&#95;ovary-m0033&#95;3p), which expressed in the sheep ovary and testis, was confirmed by real time PCR and northern blot. Ovis&#95;aries&#95;ovary-m0033&#95;3p was 21 nucleotides in length and located on chromosome 12, and it had 100% similarity to hsa-miR-214-3p, mmu-miR-214-3p, dre-miR-214and ssc-miR-214. Meanwhile, the pre-miRNA was 82 nucleotides in length and had a standard hairpin stem-loop structure. From the consistency of the sequence and structure, we speculated that ovis&#95;aries&#95;ovary-m0033&#95;3p had a function similar to hsa-miR-214-3p, which is involved in the fine regulation of cell survival, embryonic development, breeding activities and resistance to ovarian cancer, so we defined it as oar-miR-214-3p. These experimental results will enrich the miRNA database for ovis aries and provide the basis for researching the regulation mechanism of miRNA in relation to breeding activities of seasonal breeding animals.