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Scientific reports.
Publisher:
Nature Publishing Group,
Frequency: Continuously updated
Country: England
Language: English
Start Year:2011 -
ISSN:
2045-2322 (Electronic)
2045-2322 (Linking)
2045-2322 (Linking)
Impact Factor
4.6
2022
| NLM ID: | 101563288 |
| (OCoLC): | 732869387 |
| LCCN: | 2011250880 |
Molecular Detection of Theileria ovis and Theleiria equi in Livestock from Palestine. Theileria and Babesia are intracellular protozoan parasites infecting a wide range of animals. In Palestine, there is limited information on the prevalence of Theileria and Babesia spp. in livestock. We used PCR of the 18S ribosomal RNA gene followed by DNA sequencing to detect and identify parasite DNA in blood samples from sheep (n = 49), goats (n = 48), horses (n = 40), camels (n = 34), donkeys (n = 28) and mules (n = 2) from four districts of Palestine. DNA of T. ovis and T. equi was detected in 19 and 2 ovine blood samples, respectively. None of the camels, donkeys...
Dysbiosis associated with acute helminth infections in herbivorous youngstock – observations and implications. A plethora of data points towards a role of the gastrointestinal (GI) microbiota of neonatal and young vertebrates in supporting the development and regulation of the host immune system. However, knowledge of the impact that infections by GI helminths exert on the developing microbiota of juvenile hosts is, thus far, limited. This study investigates, for the first time, the associations between acute infections by GI helminths and the faecal microbial and metabolic profiles of a cohort of equine youngstock, prior to and following treatment with parasiticides (ivermectin). We observed that high...
Evaluation of the Structure of Myodural Bridges in an Equine Model of Ehlers-Danlos Syndromes. Myodural bridges have been described in various species as connective tissue structures "bridging" small cranio-cervical muscles to the dura. Myodural bridges are thought to stabilize the dural sac during head and neck movements and promote cerebrospinal fluid motion; however, their role in neurological diseases has not yet been established. We report ultrasonographic visualization, necropsy, histopathologic and ultrastructural findings of myodural bridges in horses with hereditary equine regional dermal asthenia (HERDA), an equine model of Ehlers-Danlos syndromes. Five HERDA and 5 control hor...
Unraveling the effects of the gut microbiota composition and function on horse endurance physiology. An integrated analysis of gut microbiota, blood biochemical and metabolome in 52 endurance horses was performed. Clustering by gut microbiota revealed the existence of two communities mainly driven by diet as host properties showed little effect. Community 1 presented lower richness and diversity, but higher dominance and rarity of species, including some pathobionts. Moreover, its microbiota composition was tightly linked to host blood metabolites related to lipid metabolism and glycolysis at basal time. Despite the lower fiber intake, community type 1 appeared more specialized to produce ace...
Effects of dietary arginine supplementation in pregnant mares on maternal metabolism, placental structure and function and foal growth. Foals born to primiparous mares are lighter and less mature than those born to multiparous dams. Factors driving this difference are not totally understood. Using 7 multiparous and 6 primiparous standardbred mares, we demonstrated that, in late gestation, primiparous mares were less insulin resistant compared to multiparous mares, and that their foals had reduced plasma amino-acid concentrations at birth compared to foals born to multiparous mares. Vascular development, as observed through structure and gene expression, and global DNA methylation were also reduced in primiparous placentas. Ano...
The horse Y chromosome as an informative marker for tracing sire lines. Analysis of the Y chromosome is the best-established way to reconstruct paternal family history in humans. Here, we applied fine-scaled Y-chromosomal haplotyping in horses with biallelic markers and demonstrate the potential of our approach to address the ancestry of sire lines. We de novo assembled a draft reference of the male-specific region of the Y chromosome from Illumina short reads and then screened 5.8 million basepairs for variants in 130 specimens from intensively selected and rural breeds and nine Przewalski's horses. Among domestic horses we confirmed the predominance of a young'c...
Identification of piRNAs and piRNA clusters in the testes of the Mongolian horse. P-element induced wimpy testis-interacting RNAs (piRNAs) are essential for testicular development and spermatogenesis in mammals. Comparative analyses of the molecular mechanisms of spermatogenesis among different organisms are therefore dependent on accurate characterizations of piRNAs. At present, little is known of piRNAs in non-model organisms. Here, we characterize piRNAs in the Mongolian horse, a hardy breed that reproduces under extreme circumstances. A thorough understanding of spermatogenesis and reproduction in this breed may provide insights for the improvement of fecundity and repr...
Pollens destroy respiratory epithelial cell anchors and drive alphaherpesvirus infection. Pollens are well-known triggers of respiratory allergies and asthma. The pollen burden in today's ambient air is constantly increasing due to rising climate change and air pollution. How pollens interact with the respiratory mucosa remains largely unknown due to a lack of representative model systems. We here demonstrate how pollen proteases of Kentucky bluegrass, white birch and hazel selectively destroy integrity and anchorage of columnar respiratory epithelial cells, but not of basal cells, in both ex vivo respiratory mucosal explants and in vitro primary equine respiratory epithelial cells...
Comparing the effects of non-homogenous mixing patterns on epidemiological outcomes in equine populations: A mathematical modelling study. Disease transmission models often assume homogenous mixing. This assumption, however, has the potential to misrepresent the disease dynamics for populations in which contact patterns are non-random. A disease transmission model with an SEIR structure was used to compare the effect of weighted and unweighted empirical equine contact networks to weighted and unweighted theoretical networks generated using random mixing. Equine influenza was used as a case study. Incidence curves generated with the unweighted empirical networks were similar in epidemic duration (5-8 days) and peak incidence (30.8...
Asymmetric recurrent laryngeal nerve conduction velocities and dorsal cricoarytenoid muscle electromyographic characteristics in clinically normal horses. The dorsal cricoarytenoid (DCA) muscles, are a fundamental component of the athletic horse's respiratory system: as the sole abductors of the airways, they maintain the size of the rima glottis which is essential for enabling maximal air intake during intense exercise. Dysfunction of the DCA muscle leads to arytenoid collapse during exercise, resulting in poor performance. An electrodiagnostic study including electromyography of the dorsal cricoarytenoid muscles and conduction velocity testing of the innervating recurrent laryngeal nerves (RLn) was conducted in horses with normal laryngeal fu...
The application of Lempel-Ziv and Titchener complexity analysis for equine telemetric electrocardiographic recordings. The analysis of equine electrocardiographic (ECG) recordings is complicated by the absence of agreed abnormality classification criteria. We explore the applicability of several complexity analysis methods for characterization of non-linear aspects of electrocardiographic recordings. We here show that complexity estimates provided by Lempel-Ziv '76, Titchener's T-complexity and Lempel-Ziv '78 analysis of ECG recordings of healthy Thoroughbred horses are highly dependent on the duration of analysed ECG fragments and the heart rate. The results provide a methodological basis and a feasible refer...
Physiological outcomes of calming behaviors support the resilience hypothesis in horses. To manage a stressful stimulus animals react both behaviorally and physiologically to restore the homeostasis. In stable horses, a stressful stimulus can be represented by social separation, riding discomfort or the presence of novel objects in their environment. Although Heart Rate Variability is a common indicator of stress levels in horses, the behavioral mechanisms concurrently occurring under stressful conditions are still unknown. The sudden inflation of a balloon was administered to 33 horses. Video-recording of self-directed behaviors (snore, vacuum chewing, snort, head/body shaking) a...
Hyperactivated stallion spermatozoa fail to exhibit a rheotaxis-like behaviour, unlike other species. The journey of spermatozoa through the female genital tract is facilitated by rheotaxis, or the cell's preference to swim against a flow, as well as thigmotaxis, the wall tracking behaviour, which guides them to the site of fertilisation. The aim of this study was to characterise the rheotactic and thigmotactic response of stallion sperm within a microfluidic channel. Stallion sperm rheotaxis was assessed within the microfluidic channel with regard to: (i) A range of flow velocities, (ii) Varying media viscosity and (iii) Sperm hyperactivation. Sperm distribution across the microfluidic channe...
Gene set enrichment analysis of the bronchial epithelium implicates contribution of cell cycle and tissue repair processes in equine asthma. Severe equine asthma is a chronic inflammatory condition of the lower airways similar to adult-onset asthma in humans. Exacerbations are characterized by bronchial and bronchiolar neutrophilic inflammation, mucus hypersecretion and airway constriction. In this study we analyzed the gene expression response of the bronchial epithelium within groups of asthmatic and non-asthmatic animals following exposure to a dusty hay challenge. After challenge we identified 2341 and 120 differentially expressed genes in asthmatic and non-asthmatic horses, respectively. Gene set enrichment analysis of changes...
Facial expression and oxytocin as possible markers of positive emotions in horses. Behavioural and physiological markers of discrete positive emotions remain little investigated in animals. To characterise new markers in horses, we used tactile stimulations to induce emotional situation of contrasting valence. In the Gentle grooming group (G, N = 13) horses were gently groomed during 11 sessions on the body areas they appreciated the most. Horses in the Standard grooming group (S, N = 14) were groomed using a fixed procedure, reported to induce avoidance reactions in some horses. At session 11, G horses expressed significantly more contact-seeking behaviours than S h...
Differences in the intrinsic chondrogenic potential of equine umbilical cord matrix and cord blood mesenchymal stromal/stem cells for cartilage regeneration. Umbilical cord blood mesenchymal stromal/stem cells (UCB-MSCs) and umbilical cord matrix MSCs (UCM-MSCs) have chondrogenic potential and are alternative sources to standard surgically derived bone marrow or adipose tissue collection for cartilage engineering. However, the majority of comparative studies explore neonatal MSCs potential only on ISCT benchmark assays accounting for some bias in the reproducibility between in vitro and in clinical studies. Therefore, we characterized equine UCB-MSCs and UCM-MSCs and investigated with particular attention their chondrogenesis potential in 3D cultu...
Arthroscopic near infrared spectroscopy enables simultaneous quantitative evaluation of articular cartilage and subchondral bone in vivo. Arthroscopic assessment of articular tissues is highly subjective and poorly reproducible. To ensure optimal patient care, quantitative techniques (e.g., near infrared spectroscopy (NIRS)) could substantially enhance arthroscopic diagnosis of initial signs of post-traumatic osteoarthritis (PTOA). Here, we demonstrate, for the first time, the potential of arthroscopic NIRS to simultaneously monitor progressive degeneration of cartilage and subchondral bone in vivo in Shetland ponies undergoing different experimental cartilage repair procedures. Osteochondral tissues adjacent to the repair sites...
Domestic horses (Equus caballus) discriminate between negative and positive human nonverbal vocalisations. The ability to discriminate between emotion in vocal signals is highly adaptive in social species. It may also be adaptive for domestic species to distinguish such signals in humans. Here we present a playback study investigating whether horses spontaneously respond in a functionally relevant way towards positive and negative emotion in human nonverbal vocalisations. We presented horses with positively- and negatively-valenced human vocalisations (laughter and growling, respectively) in the absence of all other emotional cues. Horses were found to adopt a freeze posture for significantly longe...
Interaction of septin 7 and DOCK8 in equine lymphocytes reveals novel insights into signaling pathways associated with autoimmunity. The GTP-binding protein septin 7 is involved in various cellular processes, including cytoskeleton organization, migration and the regulation of cell shape. Septin 7 function in lymphocytes, however, is poorly characterized. Since the intracellular signaling role of septin 7 is dependent on its interaction network, interaction proteomics was applied to attain novel knowledge about septin 7 function in hematopoietic cells. Our previous finding of decreased septin 7 expression in blood-derived lymphocytes in ERU, a spontaneous animal model for autoimmune uveitis in man, extended the role of sept...
Composition, structure and tensile biomechanical properties of equine articular cartilage during growth and maturation. Articular cartilage undergoes structural and biochemical changes during maturation, but the knowledge on how these changes relate to articular cartilage function at different stages of maturation is lacking. Equine articular cartilage samples of four different maturation levels (newborn, 5-month-old, 11-month-old and adult) were collected (N = 25). Biomechanical tensile testing, Fourier transform infrared microspectroscopy (FTIR-MS) and polarized light microscopy were used to study the tensile, biochemical and structural properties of articular cartilage, respectively. The tensile modulus ...
Physiological costs of infection: herpesvirus replication is linked to blood oxidative stress in equids. Viruses may have a dramatic impact on the health of their animal hosts. The patho-physiological mechanisms underlying viral infections in animals are, however, not well understood. It is increasingly recognized that oxidative stress may be a major physiological cost of viral infections. Here we compare three blood-based markers of oxidative status in herpes positive and negative individuals of the domestic horse (Equus ferus caballus) and of both captive and free-ranging Mongolian khulan (Equus hemionus hemionus) and plains zebra (Equus quagga). Herpes positive free-ranging animals had signifi...
Attentional state and brain processes: state-dependent lateralization of EEG profiles in horses. Lateralization of brain functions has been suggested to provide individuals with advantages, such as an increase of neural efficiency. The right hemisphere is likely to be specialized for processing attention for details and the left hemisphere for categorization of stimuli. Thus attentional processes actually may underlie lateralization. In the present study, we hypothesized that the attentional state of horses could be reflected in the lateralization of brain responses. We used i) a recently developed attention test to measure horses' visual attentional responses towards a standardized stimu...
Cross-modal perception of human emotion in domestic horses (Equus caballus). Humans have domesticated many kinds of animals in their history. Dogs and horses have particularly close relationships with humans as cooperative partners. However, fewer scientific studies have been conducted on cognition in horses compared to dogs. Studies have shown that horses cross-modally distinguish human facial expressions and recognize familiar people, which suggests that they also cross-modally distinguish human emotions. In the present study, we used the expectancy violation method to investigate whether horses cross-modally perceive human emotions. Horses were shown a picture of a ...
First Radiological Study of a Complete Dental Ontogeny Sequence of an Extinct Equid: Implications for Equidae Life History and Taphonomy. The sequence of cheek teeth mineralization, eruption, and replacement of an extinct horse species is here documented with radiological techniques for the first time thanks to the exceptional preservation of Hipparion sp. mandibles from Cerro de los Batallones (Madrid Basin, Spain). The sequence of dental ontogeny in mammals provides valuable insights about life history traits, such as the pace of growth, and about the mode of formation of fossiliferous assemblages. We have determined that the order of permanent cheek teeth mineralization and eruption of hipparionine horses is m1, m2, (p2, p3),...
Variation in faecal microbiota in a group of horses managed at pasture over a 12-month period. Colic (abdominal pain) is a common cause of mortality in horses. Change in management of horses is associated with increased colic risk and seasonal patterns of increased risk have been identified. Shifts in gut microbiota composition in response to management change have been proposed as one potential underlying mechanism for colic. However, the intestinal microbiota in normal horses and how this varies over different seasons has not previously been investigated. In this study the faecal microbiota composition was studied over 12 months in a population of horses managed at pasture with minima...
An epistatic effect of KRT25 on SP6 is involved in curly coat in horses. Curly coat represents an extraordinary type of coat in horses, particularly seen in American Bashkir Curly Horses and Missouri Foxtrotters. In some horses with curly coat, a hypotrichosis of variable extent was observed, making the phenotype appear more complex. In our study, we aimed at investigating the genetic background of curly coat with and without hypotrichosis using high density bead chip genotype and next generation sequencing data. Genome-wide association analysis detected significant signals (p = 1.412 × 10-05-1.102 × 10-08) on horse chromosome 11 at 22-35 Mb. In thi...
Founder-specific inbreeding depression affects racing performance in Thoroughbred horses. The Thoroughbred horse has played an important role in both sporting and economic aspects of society since the establishment of the breed in the 1700s. The extensive pedigree and phenotypic information available for the Thoroughbred horse population provides a unique opportunity to examine the effects of 300 years of selective breeding on genetic load. By analysing the relationship between inbreeding and racing performance of 135,572 individuals, we found that selective breeding has not efficiently alleviated the Australian Thoroughbred population of its genetic load. However, we found evidenc...
Proteins involved in embryo-maternal interaction around the signalling of maternal recognition of pregnancy in the horse. During maternal recognition of pregnancy (MRP), a conceptus-derived signal leads to the persistence of the corpus luteum and the maintenance of gestation. In the horse, the nature of this signal remains to be elucidated. Several studies have focused on the changes in gene expression during MRP, but little information exists at the protein level. The aim of this study was to identify the proteins at the embryo-maternal interface around signalling of MRP in the horse (day 13) by means of mass spectrometry. A distinct influence of pregnancy was established, with 119 proteins differentially expres...
A cross-species judgement bias task: integrating active trial initiation into a spatial Go/No-go task. Judgement bias tasks are promising tools to assess emotional valence in animals, however current designs are often time-consuming and lack aspects of validity. This study aimed to establish an improved design that addresses these issues and can be used across species. Horses, rats, and mice were trained on a spatial Go/No-go task where animals could initiate each trial. The location of an open goal-box, at either end of a row of five goal-boxes, signalled either reward (positive trial) or non-reward (negative trial). Animals first learned to approach the goal-box in positive trials (Go) and to...
Access to a main alphaherpesvirus receptor, located basolaterally in the respiratory epithelium, is masked by intercellular junctions. The respiratory epithelium of humans and animals is frequently exposed to alphaherpesviruses, originating from either external exposure or reactivation from latency. To date, the polarity of alphaherpesvirus infection in the respiratory epithelium and the role of respiratory epithelial integrity herein has not been studied. Equine herpesvirus type 1 (EHV1), a well-known member of the alphaherpesvirus family, was used to infect equine respiratory mucosal explants and primary equine respiratory epithelial cells (EREC), grown at the air-liquid interface. EHV1 binding to and infection of mucosal e...
