Search results for "sheep"

Inhibition of denitrification and N2O emission by urine-derived benzoic and hippuric acid

2006

Abstract Hippuric acid (HA) in cattle urine acts as a natural inhibitor of soil N2O emissions. As HA concentration varies with diet, we determined critical HA levels. We also tested the hypothesis that the inhibition occurs because the HA breakdown product benzoic acid (BA) inhibits denitrification rates. During a 64-day incubation, we quantified emissions from artificial urine varying in HA, BA and glycine (Gly) concentrations, added to a sandy pasture soil. Increasing HA concentration from 0.4 to 5.6 mmol kg−1 soil significantly decreased the average N2O flux by 54%. At 3.9 mmol kg−1 soil, denitrification levels were 50% reduced for BA as compared to Gly. We conclude that HA inhibits both…

Investigation of coat colour affecting genes in several sheep breeds

2009

Variance component estimation for SCS in different local breeds and species

2009

Chromosomal assignment of the ovine hairless (hr) gene by fluorescence in situ hybridization.

2008

Congenital hypotrichosis in mammalian species consists of partial or complete absence of a hair coat at birth. Affected individuals having a partial hair coat at birth may loose it subsequently.The aim of this paper was to physically map the ovine hr gene using fluorescence in situ hybridization (FISH).A preliminary study on an internet data bank (http://www.informatics.jax.org) showed that the regions of the hr gene on murine chromosome 14 and human chromosome 8 present homology with ovine chromosome 2.

β-lactoglobulin gene promoter: new SNPs in sheep and goat

2008

β-lactoglobulin (β-lg) is the major whey protein in milk of ruminants and several non ruminant species, but it is lacking in rodents, lagomorphs and human. The aim of this work was sequencing the promoter region of β-lg gene in Sicilian sheep and goat dairy breeds, in order to identify polymorphisms. In these species, the promoter region was aligned using the sequences available on database. A common set of primers was designed to amplify and sequence a fragment of approximately 2.1 kb. Within this region, 12 single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) were identified in goat breeds: 7 out of them were not yet reported in literature. Moreover, in sheep breeds 15 SNPs were newly identified. Using…

How Geography and Climate Shaped the Genomic Diversity of Italian Local Cattle and Sheep Breeds

2022

International audience; Understanding the relationships among geography, climate, and genetics is increasingly important for animal farming and breeding. In this study, we examine these inter-relationships in the context of local cattle and sheep breeds distributed along the Italian territory. To this aim, we used redundancy analysis on genomic data from previous projects combined with geographical coordinates and corresponding climatic data. The effect of geographic factors (latitude and longitude) was more important in sheep (26.4%) than that in cattle (13.8%). Once geography had been partialled out of analysis, 10.1% of cattle genomic diversity and 13.3% of that of sheep could be ascribe…

Learnings from the Finnish Game Industry

2016

The motivation behind our research was the rapid growth and business wins of world-class Finnish game companies, like Supercell, as well as the success of other game companies in Finland. In particular, Supercell's growth is something that has not been heard of before and this raised the interest to research what game companies have been doing right. Supercell is not the only Finnish success. Rovio is also well known and has the roots for success from few years before. There are also other game companies in Finland that have succeeded and this motivated us to investigate what is happening behind the game industry and what could be learned from there that could be applied to other software i…

Analyses of udder health in Valle del Belice dairy sheep using SCC

2005

Intramammary infections (IMI) are a complex of inflammatory diseases of the mammary gland. Mastitis is one of the most frequent IMI affecting small dairy ruminants. Direct selection against clinical mastitis is difficult because mastitis in not widely recorded; therefore, somatic cell count (SCC) is promoted as selection criterion for mastitis resistance. A dataset containing 2,457 first- lactation Valle del Belice ewes from 14 flocks recorded from 1998 to 2003 was analysed. In total 116 sires with at least four daughters with a record were included in the pedigree file. Test-day IMI events were coded as a binary trait using a SCC cut-off value of 750,000 cells/ml. Analyses of risk factors …

Polymorphisms at β-defensin genes and mastitis in Valle del Belice dairy sheep: a case control study

2015

Mastitis is the most common and costly pathology affecting dairy animals. The identification of genetic markers that allow the inclusion of mastitis resistance in selection programs would help to reduce the costs due to the disease and the use of antibiotics. In recent years, β-defensin genes have been studied in several domestic species due to their important role in the innate immune response. The aim of this study was to determine whether β-defensin genes variability, β-defensin 1 (SBD1) and β-defensin 2 (SBD2), could distinguish between infected cases and healthy controls in Valle del Belice dairy sheep. Somatic cell count (SCC) is a powerful tool to identify animals with intramammary i…