African swine fever virus I177L induces host inflammatory responses by facilitating the TRAF6-TAK1 axis and NLRP3 inflammasome assembly.

African swine fever virus (ASFV) is the pathogen of African swine fever (ASF), and its infection causes a lethal disease in pigs, with severe pathological lesions. These changes indicate excessive inflammatory responses in infected pigs, which is the main cause of death, but the ASFV proteins worked in this physiological process and the mechanisms underlying ASFV-induced inflammation remain unclear. Here, we identify that viral I177L works in these inflammatory responses.

Post-translational cleavage generates truncated IgY forms in the snake .

While variable regions of immunoglobulins are extensively diversified by V(D)J recombination and somatic hypermutation in vertebrates, the constant regions of immunoglobulin heavy chains also utilize certain mechanisms to produce diversity, including class switch recombination (CSR), subclass differentiation, and alternative expression of the same gene. Many species of birds, reptiles, and amphibians express a truncated isoform of immunoglobulin Y (IgY), termed IgY(ΔFc), which lacks the υCH3 and υCH4 domains. In Anseriformes, IgY(ΔFc) arises from alternative transcriptional termination sites within the same υ gene, whereas in some turtles, intact IgY and IgY(ΔFc) are encoded by distinct genes.

Advances and applications of genetically modified pig models in biomedical and agricultural field.

Compared with rodents, pigs are closer to humans in terms of anatomy, metabolism and physiology, so they are ideal animal models of human diseases and xenotransplantation donors. In addition, as one of the most important livestock in China, pigs are closely related to our lives in terms of breeding improvement, disease prevention and animal welfare. In this review, we mainly summarize the research progress and future application of genetically modified pig models in the fields of xenotransplantation, molecular breeding and human disease models.

Mechanism of random integration of foreign DNA in transgenic mice.

Little is known about how foreign DNA is randomly integrated into chromosomes in transgenic animals. In the current study, the insertion sites of 36 transgenic mice were mapped by thermal asymmetric interlaced PCR, and 38 junction sequences were obtained from 30 samples. Analysis of the 38 sequences revealed that 44.

Pig large tumor suppressor 2 (Lats2), a novel gene that may regulate the fat reduction in adipocyte.

Clenbuterol, a Beta(2)-adrenoceptor agonist, has been proven to be a powerful repartition agent that can decrease fat deposition. Based on results from our previous cDNA microarray experiment of pig clenbuterol administration, a novel up-regulated EST was full-length cloned (4859 bp encoding 1041 amino acids) and found to be the pig homolog of large tumor suppressor 2 (Lats2). We mapped pig Lats2 to chromosome 11p13-14 by using FISH, and western blotting demonstrated that pig Lats2 protein was most abundant in adipose.

Effects of fucosylated milk of goat and mouse on Helicobacter pylori binding to Lewis b antigen.

Aim: To evaluate the effects of animal milk containing fucosylated antigens on Helicobacter pylori (H. pylori) binding to Lewis b antigen.

Methods: A mammary gland expression vector containing human alpha1-3/4-fucosyltransferase cDNA sequences was constructed.