Residual feed intake breeding value associated with growth, carcass traits, meat quality, bone properties and humoral immunity in Japanese quail.

Improved feed efficiency (FE) is one of the most important achievements in animal breeding programs. The present investigation aimed to determine the phenotypic correlations of residual feed intake (RFI) breeding value with some traits in growing Japanese quail. A total of 48 birds (24 males and 24 females) were selected from 220 quail chicks divided into three classes based on breeding values (BV) for RFI including low (LBV; n = 16), medium (MBV; n = 16), and high-BV (HBV; n = 16) were used to test FE. The effects of three groups of BV on the studied traits including carcass traits, meat quality, humoral immunity, and bone properties were evaluated. The BV for RFI was positively correlated with feed conversion ratio (FCR) and feed intake (FI) but not with metabolic BW (MBW0.75). Live body weight, carcass, breast, and thigh weight in the LBV-RFI group were significantly greater than those in the HBV-RFI group. The BV for RFI had a negative correlation with live body weight and thigh weight. Our findings suggested that the selection of LBV-RFI quails may be useful to increase live body weight without any adverse impact on meat quality and bone properties, and live body weight can be implemented in breeding programs as an indirect selection indicator for improvement of FE in quails.

Direct and maternal genetic effects for preinflection point growth traits and humoral immunity in quail.

Early growth traits in quails are considered as the growth performances before the inflection point which are genetically different from body weights (BW) at later stages. Moreover, in addition to growth performance, humoral immunity is moderately heritable and is considered in some breeding programs. However, estimating the direct genetic, particularly the maternal genetic correlations between growth and immunity in quail, are not studied sufficiently, which were the aims of the present study. The quails' BW were recorded at hatch (BW0) to 25 d of age with a 5-d interval and body weight gains (BWG) were measured as average growth performance of the birds in a 5-d period. Antibody titer against Newcastle disease virus (IgN) was measured through the hemagglutination inhibition (HI) test. For titration of anti-SRBC antibodies (IgY and IgM), a hemagglutination microtiter assay was used. In general, growth records in 4,181 birds and humoral immune responses in 1,023 birds were assigned to the study. The genetic parameters were estimated by single-trait analysis via Gibb's sampling. After finding the best model for each trait, multi-trait analysis was done to estimate the direct and maternal genetic correlations. Direct heritabilities (h2) were estimated to be moderate for BW (0.481-0.551) and BWG (0.524-0.557), while h2 for immune responses were low (0.035-0.079). Maternal environmental effect (c2) was only significant for BW0, BW5, and BWG0-5. Maternal heritabilities (m2) for BW and BWG were all lower than corresponding h2, ranging from 0.072 (BW25) to 0.098 (BW0). The m2 for IgN (0.098) was more than 2.5 times greater than h2 (0.040) for this trait. Direct (ra) and maternal (rm) genetic correlations between IgN-BW, IgY-BW, and IgY-BWG were negative, while ra and rm for IgM-BW, IgN-BWG, and IgM-BWG were positive. The ra between humoral immune responses were low to moderate and rm was significant only for IgY-IgM (0.339). Given positive genetic correlations in BWG-IgN and BWG-IgM as well as positive genetic correlations between both IgN and IgM with IgY, it is suggested that including the BWG in the breeding programs would directly result in the improvement of the birds' growth performance. It would also contribute indirectly to the improvement of the birds' humoral immune responses.

Investigation of egg production curve in ostrich using nonlinear functions.

In most countries, ostrich farming is considered a developing branch of the efficient poultry industry. The profitability of ostrich farm requires specific consideration of productions features such as the female fertility, egg production, hatchability, and growth performance. Hence, this study aimed to fit nonlinear functions to describe the ostrich egg production pattern to achieve the most appropriate and recommendable mathematical function for future studies. For this purpose, 14,507 daily records of 184 female ostriches in 5 production seasons (periods) during 2016 to 2021 were used. Five nonlinear functions including Incomplete gamma (Wood function), Corrected gamma (McNally), nonlinear Logistic (Yang), Logistic (Nelder), and Lokhorst were fitted for modeling the egg production curve in ostrich. The goodness of fit criteria's including Mean Square Error (MSE), Likelihood Ratio Test (LRT), Akaike Information Criterion (AIC), and Bayesian Information Criterion (BIC) were used to evaluate and selection of the best function. The results indicated that the Wood and the McNally functions with a slight difference in all fitting criteria were the best-fitted functions and the Yang function with the highest values of MSE, LRT, AIC, BIC, were the most inappropriate function to describe the ostrich egg production curve. The McNally and the Wood can be recommended as appropriate functions to describe egg production during 5 production seasons in the studied ostrich flock.

Study of genetic and non-genetic effects on cumulative survival in a crossbred population of quail.

Minimizing bird mortality in the commercial quail breeding industry is important from an economic and welfare perspective. Genetic and non-genetic factors can influence on the cumulative survival of the birds (CS). Accordingly, this study aimed to investigate non-genetic factors on CSs (cumulative survival of the birds from hatch to 5 (CS1), 10 (CS2), 15 (CS3), 20 (CS4), 25 (CS5), 30 (CS6), 35 (CS7), 40 (CS8), and 45 (CS9) days of age), and estimation of the genetic parameters for CSs in crossbred population of quail. Data set included 1794 records from crossbred chicks hatched from 70 sires and 72 dams. The fixed effects were analyzed using an animal model by ASReml software, and all traits were analyzed using Bayesian method via Gibbs sampling by fitting of 6 threshold animal models including the direct genetic effect, the maternal permanent environmental effect, and the maternal genetic effect. The best fitted model for each trait was selected based on the deviance information criteria. Hatch number, the month of hatch, and combination of chickens showed a significant effect on CSs, but the sex of chickens does not have a significant effect on CSs. However, females have higher survival than males (except for CS1). With the best model, the highest and lowest direct heritability was estimated for CS5 (0.386) and CS3 (0.250), respectively. The maternal genetic effect was significant for CS1, CS2, CS3, and CS4 traits, but the maternal permanent environmental effect was significant only for CS1. The range of maternal heritability for CS1 to CS4 traits was estimated from 0.064 to 0.111, and ratio of the permanent environmental variance to phenotypic variance for CS1 was 0.021. The result showed that increasing of the birds' survival could be performed by correcting non-genetic factors and genetic selection for CSs considering the maternal genetic effects in younger ages. HIGHLIGHTS: • In the commercial quail breeding industry, the bird mortality is important from an economic and welfare perspective. • Improving quail survival can be achieved by controlling the genetic and non-genetic factors affecting on survival, so knowledge of these factors is necessary. • The combination of crossbred chickens had a significant effect on cumulative survival traits. • The Cumulative survival traits in the crossbred population had relatively high genetic diversity, so genetic selection for these traits could be effective.

Scientometric evaluation of 100-year history of Poultry Science (1921-2020).

To have a better contribution to the poultry production community, the Poultry Science Association founded journals including Poultry Science (PS) at 1921. Now, after 100 yr of publishing, PS ranks between the top 10 journals in the category of "agriculture, dairy, and animal science". One hundred years after publishing the first paper in PS, the poultry industry has been completely revolutionized. Hence, it will be interesting to establish scientometrics study of the PS development during the last century. Therefore, based on findings of the current study, among countries/authors' collaborations, future research fronts, and possibility of hot topics in the coming years may be predictable. Accordingly, a total of 22,451 articles were retrieved. For content analyses, according to the PS categorization for subject areas, 14 different subject areas were developed, including "behavior, breeding and quantitative genetics, education and extension, health and welfare, immunology, management and environment, metabolism and nutrition, microbiology and virology, modeling, molecular biology, physiology and anatomy, production, products, processing and marketing, and reproduction". Considering the 100-yr of PS, the most frequent subject area was "nutrition and metabolism" (14,109 articles), and "modeling" (1,114 articles) attracted less scholarly attention. However, considering the last decade (2011-2020), the most important subject area was "molecular biology" (1,420 of 2,466 articles; 57.58%), followed by "modeling" (544 of 1,144 articles; 48.88%). Moreover, the most frequent poultry species/strains were broilers (retrieved in 6,156 articles), followed by laying hens, turkeys, and quail. Considering collaboration of countries and researchers, it can be said that a total number of 108 countries contributed to PS, with the most prolific country being United States (with 9,421 articles; 43.16%), followed by China, Canada, the Netherlands, and Japan. Among the authors, Harms RH (287 articles), and Siegel PB (208) were the most prolific authors, and Siegel PB and Dunnington EA (71 articles) had more collaborations. To study keyword trends, including 3 time periods broilers was the central co-occurrent keyword, while the importance of chickens and turkeys declined during the time. Salmonella spp. was a constant representative of poultry microbiology during 100 yr. While "nutrition and metabolism" was the most important subject area, nutrition-related keywords (major items) were not concentrated and co-occurred with a variety of keywords from different subject areas. While "molecular biology" ranked first over the past decade, the importance of "nutrition and metabolism" should not be ignored. In fact, in recent years, molecular basis of the nutrition has been studied. In big-data era and due to developing the molecular biology technologies, it seems that using mathematical modeling and computational methodologies will increase and probably remains as one of the most attractive research areas for scientists at least in the upcoming future decades.

Mentha piperita as a promising feed additive used to protect liver, bone, and meat of Japanese quail against aflatoxin B1.

The present study was conducted to evaluate aflatoxin B1 (AFB1) detoxification effects of some medicinal plants under both in vitro and in vivo. The in vitro experiment was performed with 25 treatments in 5 replications. The samples of medicinal plants were incubated with AFB1 for 72 h, and the toxin residual in the supernatant was determined. The highest aflatoxin elimination was found to be related to peppermint (81%). Thereafter, in vivo experiment was conducted to investigate the effects of peppermint dried leaves, essential oil, and menthol on liver, bone, and meat, as well as the performance of growing Japanese quail fed diet contaminated with AFB1. A total of 640 7-day-old Japanese quails were assigned using a completely randomized design as 2 × 4 factorial arrangement with two levels of AFB1 (including 0 and 2.5 mg/kg diet) and four treatments (including no additive; peppermint powder, 20 g/kg; peppermint essential oil, 800 mg/kg; and menthol powder, 400 mg/kg). Those birds fed AFB1-contaminated diet with no additives showed the worst liver health status by considering super oxide dismutase (P = 0.0399), glutathione peroxidase (P = 0.0139), alanine aminotransferase (P < 0.0001), and aspartate aminotransferase levels (P = 0.0512). However, the supplementation of AFB1 contaminated diet with additives improved their liver health status. Menthol receiving birds showed the highest tibia strength, while the birds fed with AFB1-contaminated diet with no additives had the weakest bone strength (P < 0.0001). A significant increase was also observed in malondialdehyde level of meat by dietary inclusion of AFB1, which was well-repressed by the dietary supplementation of peppermint essential oil and menthol (P = 0.0075). Body weight gain dramatically decreased by adding AFB1 to the diet, which was recovered with the dietary supplementation of additives (P = 0.0585). According to the results of the current study, peppermint and its derivatives can be used to suppress aflatoxin effects on the liver, bone, and meat quality and to improve the performance of Japanese quails.

Prediction and optimization of slaughter weight in meat-type quails using artificial neural network modeling.

Carcass yield of meat-type quails is strongly correlated with the weight of the birds at slaughter (slaughter weight [SW]; body weight at 45 D of age). Moreover, prediction of superior animals for SW at the earlier stages of the rearing period is favorable for producers. Therefore, the aim of the present study was to predict and optimize SW of Japanese quails based on their early growth performances, sex, and egg weight as predictors through artificial neural network (ANN) modeling. To construct the ANN model a feed-forward multilayer perceptron neural network structure was used. Moreover, sensitivity analysis was used to arrange the predictors in the ANN model(s) according to their predictive importance too. In addition, the optimization process was conducted to determine the optimum values for the input variables to yield maximum SW. The best-fitted network on input data to predict SW in Japanese quails was determined with 7 neurons in the input layer, 11 neurons in the hidden layer, and one neuron in the output layer. The coefficient of determination (R2) was 0.9404, 0.9359, and 0.9223 for training, validation, and testing phases, respectively. For the corresponding phases, SEM were also 51.8854, 52.2764, and 55.2572, respectively. According to sensitivity analysis, the most important input variable for prediction of SW was body weight at 20 D of age (BW20), whereas the less important input variables were weight of the birds at hatch and body weight at 5 D of age. The results of the neural network optimization indicated that all the input variables, except for BW20, were very similar but slightly higher than mean values (µ for each input variable). The results of this study suggest that the ANN provides a practical approach to predict the final body weight (SW) of Japanese quails based on early performances. Moreover, phenotypic selection for higher values of early growth traits did not ensure the achievement of maximum SW, except for BW20.

Estimation of additive and non-additive genetic variance component for growth traits in Adani goats.

Non-additive genetic effects are important to increase the accuracy of estimating genetic parameters for growth traits. The aim of this study was to estimate genetic parameters and variance components, specially dominance and epistasis genetic effects, for growth traits (birth weight (BW), weaning weight (WW), 3 (W3), 6 (W6), 9 (W9), and 12 (W12) month weight) in Adani goats. Analyses were carried out using Bayesian method via Gibbs sampler animal model by fitting of 18 different models. All fixed effects (sex, type of birth, age of dam, and year) showed significant effects on BW, WW, W3, and W6, whereas the type of birth and age of dam were not significant on W9 and W12. With the best model, direct heritability estimates were 0.347, 0.178, 0.158, 0.359, 0.278, and 0.281 for BW, WW, W3, W6, W9, and W12 traits, respectively. Maternal permanent environmental effect was significant for BW and WW, but maternal genetic effect was significant only for W3. Dominance and epitasis effects were significant almost for all traits and as a proportion of phenotypic variance were ranged from 0.115 to 0.258 and 0.107 to 0.218, respectively. The range of accuracy of breeding values estimated for growth traits with appropriate evaluation models was from 0.521 to 0.652, 0.616 to 0.694, and 0.548 to 0.684 for the all animals, 10% of the best males and 50% of the best females, respectively. When dominance and epistasis effects added to models, the error variance was reduced and the accuracy of estimated breeding values increased. The accuracy of the best model showed a significant difference with the accuracy of other models (p < 0.01). The result of the present study suggests that non-additive genetic effects should be in genetic evaluation models for goat growth traits because of its effect on accuracy of estimated breeding values.

Overexpression of enhancer of zeste human homolog 2 (EZH2) gene in human cytomegalovirus positive glioblastoma multiforme tissues.

Glioblastoma multiforme (GBM) is considered to be one of the most invasive human cancers, characterized by a high mortality rate and an average survival is <1 year. These tumors are highly aggressive and insensitive to conventional radio and chemotherapy. An interesting aspect of glioblastoma is the association of active human cytomegalovirus (HCMV) infection, which is evident by the presence of viral DNA, mRNA and protein level in most glioblastoma tissues. Although the presence of the HCMV infection in glioblastoma is well established, but the oncomodulatory role of HCMV is not defined yet. Enhancer of zeste human homolog 2 (EZH2) is a key protein of the polycomb repressive complex 2, epigenetic gene silencers. There have been several reports that EZH2 activity is essential in GBM pathogenesis. In our previous research, we have found a high rate of HCMV infection in a cohort of Iranian glioblastoma patients. In this study, we investigated the expression of EZH2 in HCMV-negative versus HCMV-positive GBM tissues in comparison to non-tumor tissues. The level of expression was determined by real time PCR and the differences were calculated using the Livac or 2(-ΔΔCt) and analysis of variance (ANOVA). Relative expression of EZH2 in HCMV-negative glioblastoma tissues were increased 6.053-fold compared to non-neoplastic brain tissues, while EZH2 gene expression was increased 41.098-fold in HCMV-positive glioblastoma tissues. ANOVA test showed that there is a significant difference in EZH2 expression between normal brain tissue, HCMV-negative and HCMV-positive glioblastoma tumors (p value = 0.0001). Our data indicate that EZH2 expression can be considered a risk factor in glioblastoma and EZH2 inhibitors may serve as potential new treatment in glioblastoma. This would be an interesting new field to investigate in more detail.

Rates of inbreeding and genetic diversity in Iranian Holstein cattle.

The accumulation of inbreeding and the loss of genetic diversity is a potential problem in Holstein dairy cattle. The goal of this study was to estimate inbreeding levels and other measures of genetic diversity, using pedigree information from Iranian Holstein cattle. Edited pedigree included 1,048,572 animals. The average number of discrete generation equivalents and pedigree completeness index reached 13.4 and 90%, respectively. The rate of inbreeding was 0.3% per year. Effective number of founders, founder genomes, non-founders and ancestors of animals born between 2003 and 2011 were 503, 15.6, 16.1 and 25.7, respectively. It was proven that the unequal founder contributions as well as bottlenecks and genetic drift were important reasons for the loss of genetic diversity in the population. The top 10 ancestors with the highest marginal genetic contributions to animals born between 2003 and 2011 and with the highest contributions to inbreeding were 48.20% and 63.94%, respectively. Analyses revealed that the most important cause of genetic diversity loss was genetic drift accumulated over non-founder generations, which occurred due to small effective population size. Therefore, it seems that managing selection and mating decisions are controlling future co-ancestry and inbreeding, which would lead to better handling of the effective population size.

Expression of insulin-like growth factor binding protein-2 (IGFBP-2) gene in negative and positive human cytomegalovirus glioblastoma multiforme tissues.

Glioblastoma multiforme (GBM), a WHO grade IV malignant glioma, is the most common and lethal primary brain tumor in adults and has but few treatments. The median survival of glioblastoma patients is 12 months. The (possible) relationship between human cytomegalovirus (HCMV) infection and cancer has been investigated for decades. Detection of viral DNA, mRNA and/or antigens in tumor tissues suggests that HCMV infection has a role to play in the etiology of several human malignancies. HCMV gene products can promote the various signaling pathways critical to tumor growth, including platelet derived growth factor receptor, phosphatidyl inositol 3-kinases (PI3K/AKT), signal transducer and activator of transcription 3 and glycogen synthase kinase 3 beta that are involved in apoptosis, angiogenesis, invasion and immune evasion. Insulin-like growth factor binding protein 2 (IGFBP2) is a biomarker of the PI3K/AKT pathway so we decided to evaluate the expression of this gene in 3 groups: HCMV-negative GBM tissues, HCMV-positive GBM tissues and non-tumor tissues. The presence of HCMV was assessed according to our previous article. HCMV was present in %75 of glioblastoma tissues. Then RNA was extracted, cDNA was synthesized, and real-time PCR was performed. Then, the rate of increased expression was calculated using the Livac or 2(-ΔΔCt). ΔCt of samples in the three groups were compared using analysis of variance (ANOVA). The expression of IGFBP2 gene relative to GAPDH gene in HCMV-negative glioblastoma tissues and HCMV-positive glioblastoma tissues, respectively, was increased 5.486 and 15.032 times compared to non-neoplastic brain tissues. ANOVA tests showed that the difference of mean ΔCt for IGFBP2 gene between healthy subjects and patients with HCMV-positive and HCMV-negative glioblastoma tumors statistically significant.