Analysis of blood biochemistry and non-targeted metabolomics of endometritis in dairy cows.

The incidence of bovine endometritis, which has a negative impact on the reproduction of dairy cows, has been recently increasing. In this study, the differential markers and metabolites of healthy cows and cows with endometritis were analyzed by measuring blood biochemical indicators and immune factors using biochemical and enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay kits combined with nontargeted metabolomics. The LC-QTOF platform was used to evaluate the serum metabolomics of healthy cows and cows with endometritis after 21-27 days of calving. The results showed that glucose, free fatty acid, calcium, sodium, albumin, and alanine aminotransferase levels were significantly lower in the serum of cows with endometritis than in healthy cows (P < 0.05). However, the serum potassium, interleukin-1, interleukin-6, and tumor necrosis factor levels were significantly higher in cows with endometritis (P < 0.05). In addition, the serum metabolome data analysis of the two groups showed that the expression of 468 metabolites was significantly different (P < 0.05), of which 291 were upregulated and 177 were downregulated. These metabolites were involved in 78 metabolic pathways, including amino acid, nucleotide, carbohydrate, lipid, and vitamin metabolism pathways; signal transduction pathways, and other biological pathways. Taken together, negative energy balance and immune activation, which are related to local abnormalities in amino acid, lipid, and carbohydrate metabolism, were the important causes of endometritis in dairy cows. Metabolites such as glucose, carnosine, dehydroascorbic acid, L-malic acid, tetrahydrofolic acid, and UDP-glucose may be used as key indicators in the hematological diagnosis and treatment of endometritis in dairy cows.

The Effect of Replacing Whole-Plant Corn Silage with Daylily on the Growth Performance, Slaughtering Performance, Muscle Amino Acid Composition, and Blood Composition of Tan Sheep.

The shortage of high-quality coarse feed resources is the main factor that restricts the development of animal husbandry in many developing countries. The present study aimed to investigate the effects of replacing corn silage with daylily silage on the growth performance, slaughter performance, blood biochemical indicators, meat quality, and muscle amino acid composition of Tan sheep. A total of 72 healthy Tan sheep were randomly assigned to four groups. In each group, 0%, 20%, 40%, and 60% of corn silage were replaced with daylily silage (denoted as CON, HC20, HC40, and HC60, respectively). Tan sheep fed with daylily silage showed no significant adverse effects on their growth performance, meat quality, and muscle amino acid composition (p > 0.05). Some increase was observed in the carcass fat content value (GR-value, p < 0.05), thickness of backfat (p < 0.05), and the blood urea level (p < 0.05). These findings indicate that the utilization of daylily silage instead of whole-plant corn silage has no adverse effects on the growth performance and meat quality of Tan sheep, thus indicating that it can partially replace whole-plant corn feed as a feed resource for Tan sheep.

HSP90 expression and its association with wighteone metabolite response in HER2-positive breast cancer cells.

It is well known that heat shock protein 90 (HSP90) overexpression is correlated with poor prognosis and chemo-resistance in human malignant cancers. At the same time, wighteone, or 6-prenyl-5,7,4'-trihydroxyisoflavone, a major isoflavone component of the ornamental tall tree Erythrina suberosa, has been demonstrated to exhibit a potent anti-proliferative effect on human leukemia HL-60 cancer cell lines. In this study, the effects of wighteone on the proliferation of HER2-positive breast cancer cells were investigated, and the action mechanism was explored. MCF-7 HER2-positive breast cancer cells were treated with various concentrations of wighteone. The growth inhibitory rate of the cells was calculated by MTT assay, apoptosis was detected by flow cytometry, and the expression level of HSP90 was assessed by western blot analysis. The addition of wighteone at concentrations ranging from 1-10 g/ml in the medium for 48 h had a marked inhibition on the proliferation of HER2-positive cancer cell lines. The growth inhibitory rates with 0.5, 2 or 8 mM wighteone were significantly higher compared with the control group. Apoptosis in the wighteone-treated cells was also significantly higher compared with the control group. The expression level of HSP90 in the wighteone group was significantly lower than that in the control group. Our findings demonstrated that wighteone effectively inhibited the proliferation of HER2-positive cancer cell lines, and this is considered to be the result of downregulating HSP90 receptor and downstream signaling.