Li Jiang

Genome-wide association studies (GWAS) based on high throughput SNP genotyping technologies open a broad avenue for exploring genes associated with milk production traits in dairy cattle. Motivated by pinpointing novel quantitative trait nucleotide (QTN) across Bos Taurus genome, the present study is to perform GWAS to identify genes affecting milk production traits using current state-of-the-art SNP genotyping technology, i.e., the Illumina BovineSNP50 BeadChip. In the analyses, the five most commonly evaluated milk production traits are involved, including milk yield (MY), milk fat yield (FY), milk protein yield (PY), milk fat percentage (FP) and milk protein percentage (PP). Estimated breeding values (EBVs) of 2,093 daughters from 14 paternal half-sib families are considered as phenotypes within the framework of a daughter design. Association tests between each trait and the 54K SNPs are achieved via two different analysis approaches, a paternal transmission disequilibrium test (TDT)-based approach (L1-TDT) and a mixed model based regression analysis (MMRA). In total, 105 SNPs were detected to be significantly associated genome-wise with one or multiple milk production traits. Of the 105 SNPs, 38 were commonly detected by both methods, while four and 63 were solely detected by L1-TDT and MMRA, respectively. The majority (86 out of 105) of the significant SNPs is located within the reported QTL regions and some are within or close to the reported candidate genes. In particular, two SNPs, ARS-BFGL-NGS-4939 and BFGL-NGS-118998, are located close to the DGAT1 gene (160bp apart) and within the GHR gene, respectively. Our findings herein not only provide confirmatory evidences for previously findings, but also explore a suite of novel SNPs associated with milk production traits, and thus form a solid basis for eventually unraveling the causal mutations for milk production traits in dairy cattle.

Extracellular vesicles (EVs) are nanoscale membrane vesicles released by donor cells that can be taken up by recipient cells. The study of EVs has the potential to identify unknown cellular and molecular mechanisms in intercellular communication and disease. Exosomes, with an average diameter of ≈100 nanometers, are a subset of EVs. Different molecular families have been shown to be involved in the formation of exosomes and subsequent secretion of exosomes, which largely leads to the complexity of the form, structure and function of exosomes. In addition, because of their low immunogenicity and ability to transfer a variety of bioactive components to recipient cells, exosomes are regarded as effective drug delivery systems. This review summarizes the known mechanisms of exosomes biogenesis, cargo loading, exosomes release and bioengineering, which is of great importance for further exploration into the clinical applications of EVs.

Wheat yield can be enhanced by modifying the spike morphology and the plant height. In this study, a population of 191 F9 recombinant inbred lines (RILs) was developed from a cross between two winter cultivars Yumai 8679 and Jing 411. A dense genetic linkage map with 10,816 markers was constructed by incorporating single nucleotide polymorphism (SNP) and simple sequence repeat (SSR) marker information. Five spike morphological traits and plant height were evaluated under nine environments for the RILs and parental lines, and the number of detected environmentally stable QTLs were 18 and 3, respectively. The 1RS/1BL (rye) translocation increased both spike length and spikelet number with constant spikelet compactness. The QPht.cau-2D.1 was identical to gene Rht8, which decreased spike length without modifying spikelet number. Notably, four novel QTLs locating on chromosomes 1AS (QSc.cau-1A.1), 2DS (QSc.cau-2D.1) and 7BS (QSl.cau-7B.1 and QSl.cau-7B.2) were firstly identified in this study, which provide further insights into the genetic factors that shaped the spike morphology in wheat. Moreover, SNP markers tightly linked to previously reported QTLs will eventually facilitate future studies including their positional cloning or marker-assisted selection.