The present study investigated the effects of Lactobacillus acidophilus(LBA)and mannan-oligosaccharides(MOS)supplementation on the production performance,serum biochemistry,antioxidant profile,health indices,meat qual...The present study investigated the effects of Lactobacillus acidophilus(LBA)and mannan-oligosaccharides(MOS)supplementation on the production performance,serum biochemistry,antioxidant profile,health indices,meat quality,and lipid oxidative stability of broiler chicken.A total of 252 commercial broiler chickens at 1 d old of uniform body weight were randomly allocated to 6 maize-soybean-based dietary treatments:T1(control diet),T2(antibiotic bacitracin methylene di-salicylate[BMD]at 20 mg/kg diet),T3(MOS at 0.1%+LBA at 10^6 CFU/g feed),T4(MOS at 0.1%+LBA at 10^7 CFU/g feed),T5(MOS at 0.2%+LBA at10^6 CFU/g feed),and T6(MOS at 0.2%+LBA at 10^7 CFU/g feed).Each treatment was assigned to 6 replicates of 7 birds.The samples for meat quality and serum biochemistry analysis were taken from 12 birds per treatment(2 birds/replicate).The results revealed better(P<0.01)growth performance and production efficiency of birds fed either T5 or T6 diet compared to control or BMD supplemented diet and BMD-supplemented birds superseded the control birds.Higher(P<0.01)serum and liver antioxidant enzyme activities,meat antioxidant capacity(2,2-azinobis-3-ethylbenzothiazoline-6-sulfonic acid[ABTS]and 1,1-diphenyl-2-picrylhydrazyl[DPPH]assays),serum total protein,high-density lipoproteins(HDL)cholesterol(P<0.05),and globulin levels(P<0.01)were observed in birds fed either T5 or T6 diet compared to control or BMD supplemented birds,whereas,lower lipid oxidation(P<0.01),cardiac risk ratio,atherogenic coefficient,atherogenic index of plasma,serum glucose,triglyceride,total cholesterol levels(P<0.01),and serum albumin-to-globulin ratio(P<0.05)were observed in the chickens.The pH of meat from birds fed T4,T5 or T6 diet was lower(P<0.01)compared to control and other treatments.The extract release volume(ERV),water holding capacity(WHC),and protein content of meat were higher(P<0.05)in birds fed either T5 or T6 diet compared to control or BMD supplemented birds.Thus,it was concluded that the supplementation of 0.2%MOS along with LBA at 10^6 CFU/g is optimum for better growth performance,serum biochemistry,antioxidant profile,health indices,meat quality,and lipid oxidative stability of broiler chickens.展开更多
Background:Globally,80%people use plant-derived products for treating or preventing diseases.One prevalent perception about medicinal plants is that they are safe and devoid of adverse effects.However,approximately 1,...Background:Globally,80%people use plant-derived products for treating or preventing diseases.One prevalent perception about medicinal plants is that they are safe and devoid of adverse effects.However,approximately 1,50,000 plants contain toxic substances.Objective:The present review focuses on medicinal plant extracts/fractions toxicity assessments made in preclin-ical models by oral route.Methods:Detail studies were searched from databases including PubMed and Google Scholar.A manual reference screening of the selected studies was done to identify relevant articles,with no language restriction being imposed at the time of searching.Results:The studies included were performed in rodents,and the test substances were administered orally.Our search revealed 33 widely used plants or products with significant toxicity,and phytochemicals from these plants have been summarized.Through a systematic review,we identified a plethora of medicinal plant extracts reporting safety and toxicity concerns.Conclusion:In the future,preclinical toxicokinetic studies of herbs and the determination of their no-observed-adverse-effect levels are required for a complete safety assessment.Finally,the interaction of herbs with com-monly used/over-the-counter drugs in terms of the latter’s metabolic profile should be undertaken.展开更多
Leaf color patterns vary depending on leaf age,pathogen infection,and environmental and nutritional stresses;thus,they are widely used to diagnose plant health statuses in agricultural fields.The visible-near infrared...Leaf color patterns vary depending on leaf age,pathogen infection,and environmental and nutritional stresses;thus,they are widely used to diagnose plant health statuses in agricultural fields.The visible-near infrared-shortwave infrared(VIS-NIR-SWIR)sensor measures the leaf color pattern from a wide spectral range with high spectral resolution.However,spectral information has only been employed to understand general plant health statuses(e.g.,vegetation index)or phytopigment contents,rather than pinpointing defects of specific metabolic or signaling pathways in plants.Here,we report feature engineering and machine learning methods that utilize VIS-NIR-SWIR leaf reflectance for robust plant health diagnostics,pinpointing physiological alterations associated with the stress hormone,abscisic acid(ABA).Leaf reflectance spectra of wild-type,ABA2-overexpression,and deficient plants were collected under watered and drought conditions.Drought-and ABA-associated normalized reflectance indices(NRIs)were screened from all possible pairs of wavelength bands.Drought associated NRIs showed only a partial overlap with those related to ABA deficiency,but more NRIs were associated with drought due to additional spectral changes within the NIR wavelength range.Interpretable support vector machine classifiers built with 20 NRIs predicted treatment or genotype groups with an accuracy greater than those with conventional vegetation indices.Major selected NRIs were independent from leaf water content and chlorophyll content,2 well-characterized physiological changes under drought.The screening of NRIs,streamlined with the development of simple classifiers,serves as the most efficient means of detecting reflectance bands that are highly relevant to characteristics of interest.展开更多
Low desiccation resistance of Drosophila ananassae reflects its rarity outside the humid tropics. However, the ability of this sensitive species to evolve under seasonally varying subtropical areas is largely unknown....Low desiccation resistance of Drosophila ananassae reflects its rarity outside the humid tropics. However, the ability of this sensitive species to evolve under seasonally varying subtropical areas is largely unknown. D. ananassae flies are mostly lighter during the rainy season but darker and lighter flies occur in the autumn season in northern India. We tested the hypothesis whether seasonally varying alternative body color phenotypes of D. ananassae vary in their levels of environmental stress tolerances and mating behavior. Thus, we investigated D. ananassae flies collected during rainy and autumn seasons for changes in body melanization and their genetic basis, desiccation-related traits, cold tolerance and mating propensity. On the basis of genetic crosses, we found total body color dimorphism consistent with a single gene model in both sexes olD. ananassae. A significant increase in the frequency of the dark morph was observed during the drier autumn season, and body color phenotypes showed significant deviations from Hardy-Weinberg equilibrium, which suggests climatic selection plays a role. Resistance to desiccation as well as cold stress were two- to three-fold higher in the dark body color strain as compared with the light strain. On the basis of no-choice mating experiments, we observed significantly higher assortative matings between dark morphs under desiccation or cold stress, and between light morphs under hot or higher humidity conditions. To the best of our knowledge, this is the first report on the ecological significance of seasonally varying total body color dimorphism in a tropical species, D. ananassae.展开更多
基金funded by the Department of Biotechnology,Ministry of Science and Technology,Government of India with Grant No.BT/PR9724/AAQ/1/571/2013
文摘The present study investigated the effects of Lactobacillus acidophilus(LBA)and mannan-oligosaccharides(MOS)supplementation on the production performance,serum biochemistry,antioxidant profile,health indices,meat quality,and lipid oxidative stability of broiler chicken.A total of 252 commercial broiler chickens at 1 d old of uniform body weight were randomly allocated to 6 maize-soybean-based dietary treatments:T1(control diet),T2(antibiotic bacitracin methylene di-salicylate[BMD]at 20 mg/kg diet),T3(MOS at 0.1%+LBA at 10^6 CFU/g feed),T4(MOS at 0.1%+LBA at 10^7 CFU/g feed),T5(MOS at 0.2%+LBA at10^6 CFU/g feed),and T6(MOS at 0.2%+LBA at 10^7 CFU/g feed).Each treatment was assigned to 6 replicates of 7 birds.The samples for meat quality and serum biochemistry analysis were taken from 12 birds per treatment(2 birds/replicate).The results revealed better(P<0.01)growth performance and production efficiency of birds fed either T5 or T6 diet compared to control or BMD supplemented diet and BMD-supplemented birds superseded the control birds.Higher(P<0.01)serum and liver antioxidant enzyme activities,meat antioxidant capacity(2,2-azinobis-3-ethylbenzothiazoline-6-sulfonic acid[ABTS]and 1,1-diphenyl-2-picrylhydrazyl[DPPH]assays),serum total protein,high-density lipoproteins(HDL)cholesterol(P<0.05),and globulin levels(P<0.01)were observed in birds fed either T5 or T6 diet compared to control or BMD supplemented birds,whereas,lower lipid oxidation(P<0.01),cardiac risk ratio,atherogenic coefficient,atherogenic index of plasma,serum glucose,triglyceride,total cholesterol levels(P<0.01),and serum albumin-to-globulin ratio(P<0.05)were observed in the chickens.The pH of meat from birds fed T4,T5 or T6 diet was lower(P<0.01)compared to control and other treatments.The extract release volume(ERV),water holding capacity(WHC),and protein content of meat were higher(P<0.05)in birds fed either T5 or T6 diet compared to control or BMD supplemented birds.Thus,it was concluded that the supplementation of 0.2%MOS along with LBA at 10^6 CFU/g is optimum for better growth performance,serum biochemistry,antioxidant profile,health indices,meat quality,and lipid oxidative stability of broiler chickens.
文摘Background:Globally,80%people use plant-derived products for treating or preventing diseases.One prevalent perception about medicinal plants is that they are safe and devoid of adverse effects.However,approximately 1,50,000 plants contain toxic substances.Objective:The present review focuses on medicinal plant extracts/fractions toxicity assessments made in preclin-ical models by oral route.Methods:Detail studies were searched from databases including PubMed and Google Scholar.A manual reference screening of the selected studies was done to identify relevant articles,with no language restriction being imposed at the time of searching.Results:The studies included were performed in rodents,and the test substances were administered orally.Our search revealed 33 widely used plants or products with significant toxicity,and phytochemicals from these plants have been summarized.Through a systematic review,we identified a plethora of medicinal plant extracts reporting safety and toxicity concerns.Conclusion:In the future,preclinical toxicokinetic studies of herbs and the determination of their no-observed-adverse-effect levels are required for a complete safety assessment.Finally,the interaction of herbs with com-monly used/over-the-counter drugs in terms of the latter’s metabolic profile should be undertaken.
基金supported by the Agency for Science,Technology and Research(A*STAR)Singapore under the industry alignment fund prepositioning programHigh Performance Precision Agriculture system(A19E4a0101).
文摘Leaf color patterns vary depending on leaf age,pathogen infection,and environmental and nutritional stresses;thus,they are widely used to diagnose plant health statuses in agricultural fields.The visible-near infrared-shortwave infrared(VIS-NIR-SWIR)sensor measures the leaf color pattern from a wide spectral range with high spectral resolution.However,spectral information has only been employed to understand general plant health statuses(e.g.,vegetation index)or phytopigment contents,rather than pinpointing defects of specific metabolic or signaling pathways in plants.Here,we report feature engineering and machine learning methods that utilize VIS-NIR-SWIR leaf reflectance for robust plant health diagnostics,pinpointing physiological alterations associated with the stress hormone,abscisic acid(ABA).Leaf reflectance spectra of wild-type,ABA2-overexpression,and deficient plants were collected under watered and drought conditions.Drought-and ABA-associated normalized reflectance indices(NRIs)were screened from all possible pairs of wavelength bands.Drought associated NRIs showed only a partial overlap with those related to ABA deficiency,but more NRIs were associated with drought due to additional spectral changes within the NIR wavelength range.Interpretable support vector machine classifiers built with 20 NRIs predicted treatment or genotype groups with an accuracy greater than those with conventional vegetation indices.Major selected NRIs were independent from leaf water content and chlorophyll content,2 well-characterized physiological changes under drought.The screening of NRIs,streamlined with the development of simple classifiers,serves as the most efficient means of detecting reflectance bands that are highly relevant to characteristics of interest.
文摘Low desiccation resistance of Drosophila ananassae reflects its rarity outside the humid tropics. However, the ability of this sensitive species to evolve under seasonally varying subtropical areas is largely unknown. D. ananassae flies are mostly lighter during the rainy season but darker and lighter flies occur in the autumn season in northern India. We tested the hypothesis whether seasonally varying alternative body color phenotypes of D. ananassae vary in their levels of environmental stress tolerances and mating behavior. Thus, we investigated D. ananassae flies collected during rainy and autumn seasons for changes in body melanization and their genetic basis, desiccation-related traits, cold tolerance and mating propensity. On the basis of genetic crosses, we found total body color dimorphism consistent with a single gene model in both sexes olD. ananassae. A significant increase in the frequency of the dark morph was observed during the drier autumn season, and body color phenotypes showed significant deviations from Hardy-Weinberg equilibrium, which suggests climatic selection plays a role. Resistance to desiccation as well as cold stress were two- to three-fold higher in the dark body color strain as compared with the light strain. On the basis of no-choice mating experiments, we observed significantly higher assortative matings between dark morphs under desiccation or cold stress, and between light morphs under hot or higher humidity conditions. To the best of our knowledge, this is the first report on the ecological significance of seasonally varying total body color dimorphism in a tropical species, D. ananassae.
