Epidemiology and immunoprotection of nephropathogenic avian infectious bronchitis virus in southern China

<p>Abstract</p> <p>Background</p> <p>In last three years, 96 suspected poultry farms from different provinces in China were diagnosed for avian infectious bronchitis (IB) survey. Finally, 221 IBV strains were confirmed by dwarf embryo test and RT-PCR assay. By virus recovery trials, 187 of the isolates caused the birds died or distressed from nephritis, which was accordant with the clinical record.</p> <p>Results</p> <p>Based on epidemiology analysis of recent field isolates of nephropathogenic IB in vaccinated farms in China, YL6 strain were used for vaccination and evaluated by antibody titer and challenge tests. The immunoprotection test indicated that the practical application of vaccine based on the recent field strains could finely facilitate controlling the nephropathogenic IB.</p> <p>Conclusions</p> <p>Our study was aim at setting a guide for safeguard against nephropathogenic IBV-caused disease in China.</p

Isolation and complete genomic characterization of H1N1 subtype swine influenza viruses in southern China through the 2009 pandemic

<p>Abstract</p> <p>Background</p> <p>The swine influenza (SI) is an infectious disease of swine and human. The novel swine-origin influenza A (H1N1) that emerged from April 2009 in Mexico spread rapidly and caused a human pandemic globally. To determine whether the tremendous virus had existed in or transmitted to pigs in southern China, eight H1N1 influenza strains were identified from pigs of Guangdong province during 2008-2009.</p> <p>Results</p> <p>Based on the homology and phylogenetic analyses of the nucleotide sequences of each gene segments, the isolates were confirmed to belong to the classical SI group, with HA, NP and NS most similar to 2009 human-like H1N1 influenza virus lineages. All of the eight strains were low pathogenic influenza viruses, had the same host range, and not sensitive to class of antiviral drugs.</p> <p>Conclusions</p> <p>This study provides the evidence that there is no 2009 H1N1-like virus emerged in southern China, but the importance of swine influenza virus surveillance in China should be given a high priority.</p

Phylogenetic distribution and predominant genotype of the avian infectious bronchitis virus in China during 2008-2009

<p>Abstract</p> <p>Background</p> <p>The nephropathogenic avian infectious bronchitis (IB) caused unprecedented economic losses to the commercial chicken industry of China in 2008-2009. To investigate the prevalence of nephropathogenic IB in China, eighty IBV isolates from different provinces during 2008-2009 were identified by dwarf embryo test and RT-PCR.</p> <p>Results</p> <p>The strains were mostly isolated in winter and spring with a wide age range of IB outbreaks, from 4 to 69 days. By the virus recovery trials, 70/80 of the strains resulted in the deaths or distresses of birds from nephritis. To learn more about the molecular evolutionary characteristics of the circulating field strains, the coding region of major spike 1 (S1) protein gene of these strains was RT-PCR amplified and sequenced. Compared to the published representative strains, nucleotides and amino acids sequence analysis indicated that the S1 genes of these strains and the reference strains displayed homologies ranging from 75.1% to 99.8% and from 73.1% to 99.8% respectively. S1 protein of the major pandemic strains contained 540 or 542 amino acids with the cleavage site of HRRRR or RRFRR. Phylogenetic analysis revealed that recent field isolates of IBV in China were mostly belonged to A2-branch (QXIBV-branch) and HN08-branch, only one isolate was belonged to Gray-branch and M41-branch respectively. Most of the 80 strains showed evolutionarily distant from vaccine strains.</p> <p>Conclusions</p> <p>The results of this study suggested that nephropathogenic IBVs were mainly A2-like strains in China during 2008-2009.</p

Automatic landslide identification by Dual Graph Convolutional Network and GoogLeNet model-a case study for Xinjiang province, China

Landslides are a natural disaster that exists widely in the world and poses a great threat to human life and property, so it is of great importance to identify and locate landslides. Traditional manual interpretation can effectively identify landslides, but its efficiency is very low for large interpreted areas. In this sense, a landslide recognition method based on the Dual Graph Convolutional Network (DGCNet) is proposed to identify the landslide in remote sensing images quickly and accurately. The remote sensing image (regional remote sensing image) of the northern mountainous area of Tuergen Township, Xinyuan County, Xinjiang Province, was obtained by GeoEye-1 (spatial resolution: 0.5 m). Then, the DGCNet is used to train the labeled images, which finally shows good accuracy of landslide recognition. To show the difference with the traditional convolutional network model, this paper adopts a convolution neural network algorithm named GoogLeNet for image recognition to carry out a comparative analysis, the remote sensing satellite images (single terrain image) of Xinyuan County, Xinjiang Province is used as the data set, and the prediction accuracy is 81.25%. Compared with the GoogLeNet model, the DGCNet model has a larger identification range, which provides a new method for landslide recognition of large-scale regional remote sensing images, but the performance of DGCNet is highly dependent on the quality and characteristics of the input image. If the input data quality is poor or the image structure is unclear, the model’s performance may decline

The combination of deoxynivalenol and zearalenone at permitted feed concentrations causes serious physiological effects in young pigs

This study was to investigate the effects of the combination of deoxynivalenol (DON) and zearalenone (ZON) on pigs. Twenty-four weaning piglets were divided into a control group fed a diet free of mycotoxins and a toxin group fed a diet containing 1 mg/kg DON and 250 µg/kg ZON. The results showed that supplementation of DON and ZON in diets had extensive effects on pigs. More specifically, DON and ZON caused levels of total protein, albumin, and globulin in sera to decrease (p < 0.05) by 14.5%, 6.5% and 11.3%, respectively, and at the same time increased (p < 0.05) the serum enzyme activities of γ-glutamyltransferase, aspartate aminotransferase and alanine aminotransferase by 72.0%, 32.6% and 36.6%, respectively. In addition, DON and ZON decreased (p < 0.05) the level of anti-classical swine fever antibody titers by 14.8%. Real-time PCR showed that DON and ZON caused the mRNA expression levels of IFN-γ, TNF-α, IL-2, to decrease (p < 0.05) by 36.0%, 29.0% and 35.4%, respectively. Histopathological studies demonstrated that DON and ZON caused abnormalities in the liver, spleen, lymph nodes, uterus, and kidney. The concentrations of DON and ZON used in this study are in line with the published critical values permitted by BML. Our study clearly put the standard and adequacy of safety measures for these toxins into question. The authors suggest that with the increasing availability of cellular and molecular technologies, it is time to revisit the safety standards for toxins in feeds so as to make feeds safer, providing consumers with safer products

A vaccine targeting the RBD of the S protein of SARS-CoV-2 induces protective immunity

Severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) causes a respiratory disease called coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19), the spread of which has led to a pandemic. An effective preventive vaccine against this virus is urgently needed. As an essential step during infection, SARS-CoV-2 uses the receptor-binding domain (RBD) of the spike protein to engage with the receptor angiotensin-converting enzyme 2 (ACE2) on host cells1,2. Here we show that a recombinant vaccine that comprises residues 319–545 of the RBD of the spike protein induces a potent functional antibody response in immunized mice, rabbits and non-human primates (Macaca mulatta) as early as 7 or 14 days after the injection of a single vaccine dose. The sera from the immunized animals blocked the binding of the RBD to ACE2, which is expressed on the cell surface, and neutralized infection with a SARS-CoV-2 pseudovirus and live SARS-CoV-2 in vitro. Notably, vaccination also provided protection in non-human primates to an in vivo challenge with SARS-CoV-2. We found increased levels of RBD-specific antibodies in the sera of patients with COVID-19. We show that several immune pathways and CD4 T lymphocytes are involved in the induction of the vaccine antibody response. Our findings highlight the importance of the RBD domain in the design of SARS-CoV-2 vaccines and provide a rationale for the development of a protective vaccine through the induction of antibodies against the RBD domain

Publisher Correction: A vaccine targeting the RBD of the S protein of SARS-CoV-2 induces protective immunity (Nature, (2020), 586, 7830, (572-577), 10.1038/s41586-020-2599-8)

In the print version of this Article, some of the symbols were corrupted in Fig. 1. The HTML and PDF versions of the Article were correct, and so the original Article has not been corrected online

Mycorrhizal symbioses and tree diversity in global forest communities

Unraveling the mechanisms underlying the maintenance of species diversity is a central pursuit in ecology. It has been hypothesized that ectomycorrhizal (EcM) in contrast to arbuscular mycorrhizal fungi can reduce tree species diversity in local communities, which remains to be tested at the global scale. To address this gap, we analyzed global forest inventory data and revealed that the relationship between tree species richness and EcM tree proportion varied along environmental gradients. Specifically, the relationship is more negative at low latitudes and in moist conditions but is unimodal at high latitudes and in arid conditions. The negative association of EcM tree proportion on species diversity at low latitudes and in humid conditions is likely due to more negative plant-soil microbial interactions in these regions. These findings extend our knowledge on the mechanisms shaping global patterns in plant species diversity from a belowground view

TRY plant trait database – enhanced coverage and open access

Plant traits - the morphological, anatomical, physiological, biochemical and phenological characteristics of plants - determine how plants respond to environmental factors, affect other trophic levels, and influence ecosystem properties and their benefits and detriments to people. Plant trait data thus represent the basis for a vast area of research spanning from evolutionary biology, community and functional ecology, to biodiversity conservation, ecosystem and landscape management, restoration, biogeography and earth system modelling. Since its foundation in 2007, the TRY database of plant traits has grown continuously. It now provides unprecedented data coverage under an open access data policy and is the main plant trait database used by the research community worldwide. Increasingly, the TRY database also supports new frontiers of trait‐based plant research, including the identification of data gaps and the subsequent mobilization or measurement of new data. To support this development, in this article we evaluate the extent of the trait data compiled in TRY and analyse emerging patterns of data coverage and representativeness. Best species coverage is achieved for categorical traits - almost complete coverage for ‘plant growth form’. However, most traits relevant for ecology and vegetation modelling are characterized by continuous intraspecific variation and trait–environmental relationships. These traits have to be measured on individual plants in their respective environment. Despite unprecedented data coverage, we observe a humbling lack of completeness and representativeness of these continuous traits in many aspects. We, therefore, conclude that reducing data gaps and biases in the TRY database remains a key challenge and requires a coordinated approach to data mobilization and trait measurements. This can only be achieved in collaboration with other initiatives