Possible connection between intestinal tuft cells, ILC2s and obesity.

Intestinal tuft cells (TCs) are defined as chemosensory cells that can "taste" danger and induce immune responses. They play a critical role in gastrointestinal parasite invasion, inflammatory bowel diseases and high-fat diet-induced obesity. Intestinal IL-25, the unique product of TCs, is a key activator of type 2 immunity, especially to promote group 2 innate lymphoid cells (ILC2s) to secret IL-13. Then the IL-13 mainly promotes intestinal stem cell (ISCs) proliferation into TCs and goblet cells. This pathway formulates the circuit in the intestine. This paper focuses on the potential role of the intestinal TC, ILC2 and their circuit in obesity-induced intestinal damage, and discussion on further study and the potential therapeutic target in obesity.

Identification of differentially expressed genes and pathways for intramuscular fat deposition in pectoralis major tissues of fast-and slow-growing chickens.

BACKGROUND: Intramuscular fat (IMF) is one of the important factors influencing meat quality, however, for chickens, the molecular regulatory mechanisms underlying this trait have not yet been determined. In this study, a systematic identification of candidate genes and new pathways related to IMF deposition in chicken breast tissue has been made using gene expression profiles of two distinct breeds: Beijing-you (BJY), a slow-growing Chinese breed possessing high meat quality and Arbor Acres (AA), a commercial fast-growing broiler line. RESULTS: Agilent cDNA microarray analyses were conducted to determine gene expression profiles of breast muscle sampled at different developmental stages of BJY and AA chickens. Relative to d 1 when there is no detectable IMF, breast muscle at d 21, d 42, d 90 and d 120 (only for BJY) contained 1310 differentially expressed genes (DEGs) in BJY and 1080 DEGs in AA. Of these, 34-70 DEGs related to lipid metabolism or muscle development processes were examined further in each breed based on Gene Ontology (GO) analysis. The expression of several DEGs was correlated, positively or negatively, with the changing patterns of lipid content or breast weight across the ages sampled, indicating that those genes may play key roles in these developmental processes. In addition, based on KEGG pathway analysis of DEGs in both BJY and AA chickens, it was found that in addition to pathways affecting lipid metabolism (pathways for MAPK & PPAR signaling), cell junction-related pathways (tight junction, ECM-receptor interaction, focal adhesion, regulation of actin cytoskeleton), which play a prominent role in maintaining the integrity of tissues, could contribute to the IMF deposition. CONCLUSION: The results of this study identified potential candidate genes associated with chicken IMF deposition and imply that IMF deposition in chicken breast muscle is regulated and mediated not only by genes and pathways related to lipid metabolism and muscle development, but also by others involved in cell junctions. These findings establish the groundwork and provide new clues for deciphering the molecular mechanisms underlying IMF deposition in poultry. Further studies at the translational and posttranslational level are now required to validate the genes and pathways identified here.

Combined line-cross and half-sib QTL analysis in Duroc-Pietrain population.

A Duroc-Pietrain resource population was built to detect quantitative trait loci (QTL) that affect growth, carcass composition, and pork quality. The data were analyzed by applying three least-squares Mendelian models: a line-cross (LC) model, a half-sib (HS) model, and a combined LC and HS model (CB), which enabled the detection of QTL that had fixed, equal, and different allele frequencies for alternate breed alleles, respectively. Permutation tests were performed to determine 5% chromosome-wide and 5% genome-wide threshold values. A total of 40 (137) QTL were detected at the 5% genome-wide (chromosome-wide) level for the 35 traits analyzed. Of the 137 QTL detected, 62 were classified as the LC type (LC-QTL), 47 as the HS type (HS-QTL), and 28 as the CB type (CB-QTL). The results indicate that implementation of a series of model-based framework is not only beneficial to detect QTL, but also provides us with a new and more robust interpretation from which further methodology could be developed.

[Study of single nucleotide polymorphism of A-FABP gene and its association with fatness traits in chicken].

In this experiment, Beijing-You chicken was used to detect single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) in A-FBAP gene and to study the correlation between its genotype and the trait of fat accumulation. The first exon of the gene was amplified by one pair of primers, and SNPs were detected by the technique of single strand conformation polymorphism (SSCP) and finally confirmed by sequencing. Results of analysis of variance showed that a significant difference existed among abdominal fat percentage, subcutaneous fat thickness and intramuscular fat contents in breast musculature with different genotypes (P<0.01). It implied that A-FABP gene could be a major effector gene or could be linked to gene(s) which significantly affect fat metabolism in chicken.

[Genetic parameter estimation for inosine-5-monophosphate and intramuscular fat contents and other meat quality traits in chicken muscle].

The genetic parameters for some important flavor traits like inosine-5'-monophosphate (IMP) and intramuscular fat (IMF) contents in breast meat were estimated using a MTDFREML procedure on 1063 male, 90-day-old, purebred Beijing-You meat-type chicks (BJY). The result showed that the heritability of IMP and IMF contents in BJY breast meat was moderate or low (h2=0.23, 0.10), whereas these parameters were higher for abdominal fat weight (AFW), breast meat yield (BMY), ratio of BMY to carcass weight (BMR), leg muscle yield (LMY), body weight (BW), comb weight(CW) and comb weight percentage (CWB) (h2=0.56-0.79). The heritability of abdominal fat percentage (AFP), leg meat yield (LMY), testicle weight (TW) and testicle weight percentage (TWP) were 0.24, 0.32, 0.39 and 0.35, respectively. IMP exhibited low phenotypic correlations with BMY, LMY and SFT and no significant phenotypic correlations with other traits. IMF, to some extent, exhibited positive phenotypic correlation with BW, AFP, SFT and FSW (rP=0.11-0.33). In terms of genetic correlation, IMP was moderately or significantly negatively correlated with BW and CWP (rA=-0.38,-0.62), and a high level of positive correlation was observed with BMY (rA=0.57). Moreover, IMF was highly correlated with BW and AFW (rA=0.75,0.66), and moderately correlated with AFP and CWP (rA=0.32, 0.40). A low level of positive correlation was observed between IMP and IMF (rA =0.27). We propose that IMP and IMF contents in chicken meat could be increased with selection through line-breeding.