果实产量是番茄最重要的园艺特性。根据前人的报道，SEPMBATA型MADS-box基因SlMBP21具有控制番茄花梗离区形成以及调控萼片大小的功能。然而，我们构建过表达的SlMBP21转基因番茄植株，发现这些转基因植株显示出卷曲的叶子，扭曲和开放的雄蕊，产量降低，并产生了小而轻的种子。我们对功能获得型表型和基因表达水平的研究表明SlMBP21基因在调控叶片形态、花和花序结构、种子大小以及果实产量方面起着重要作用。番茄中SlMBP21的过表达导致叶片卷曲，叶片少，这是由于其对关键的叶片极性相关基因的调控导致上、下轴细胞生长不平衡所致。花和花序结构的缺陷导致果实减少。此外，我们发现了SlMBP21通过抑制参与确定番茄种子发育相关基因的表达并与其他一些MADS-box蛋白(S1AGL11，TAGL1和SlMBP3)相互作用来控制种子大小。因此，这些结果表明SlMBP21的过表达对植物生长和发育，特别是对番茄的果实产量造成多重损害。

Theileria luwenshuni and Theileria uilenbergi are important tick-borne pathogens and cause substantial losses to the sheep industry in China.  The improvement in detection techniques has allowed the identification of multi-homing parasitism in Theileria parasites.  Herein we evaluated the experimental infectivity of T. luwenshuni and T. uilenbergi in Chinese Kunming mice by screening blood samples of experimentally inoculated mice by microscopic examination (ME) and PCR.  T. luwenshuni infected Chinese Kunming mice and 20 mice inoculated with this parasite were positive by ME and PCR.  In addition, T. uilenbergi infected mice and 20 mice inoculated with this species were positive by ME and PCR.  However, the number of red blood cells and the levels of hemoglobin of 40 infected mice had no obvious changes in the course of infection.  Our results demonstrated the multi-homing parasitism of T. luwenshuni and T. uilenbergi, which were believed to be parasites of sheep and goats.  This study was the first to demonstrate the infection of T. luwenshuni and T. uilenbergi in Kunming mice. 

Genomic selection has been demonstrated as a powerful technology to revolutionize animal breeding.  However, marker density and minor allele frequency can affect the predictive ability of genomic estimated breeding values (GEBVs).  To investigate the impact of marker density and minor allele frequency on predictive ability, we estimated GEBVs by constructing the different subsets of single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) based on varying markers densities and minor allele frequency (MAF) for average daily gain (ADG), live weight (LW) and carcass weight (CW) in 1 059 Chinese Simmental beef cattle.  Two strategies were proposed for SNP selection to construct different marker densities: 1) select evenly-spaced SNPs (Strategy 1), and 2) select SNPs with large effects estimated from BayesB (Strategy 2).  Furthermore, predictive ability was assessed in terms of the correlation between predicted genomic values and corrected phenotypes from 10-fold cross-validation.  Predictive ability for ADG, LW and CW using autosomal SNPs were 0.13±0.002, 0.21±0.003 and 0.25±0.003, respectively.  In our study, the predictive ability increased dramatically as more SNPs were included in analysis until 200K for Strategy 1.  Under Strategy 2, we found the predictive ability slightly increased when marker densities increased from 5K to 20K, which indicated the predictive ability of 20K (3% of 770K) SNPs with large effects was equal to the predictive ability of using all SNPs.  For different MAF bins, we obtained the highest predictive ability for three traits with MAF bin 0.01–0.1.  Our result suggested that designing a low-density chip by selecting low frequency markers with large SNP effects sizes should be helpful for commercial application in Chinese Simmental cattle.

Aeromonas hydrophila isolates from clinical cases (n=43) were tested against 8 antimicrobial agents and typed by outer membrane protein (OMP) pattern by using sodium dodecyl sulfate gel electrophoresis. All isolates were resistant to ampicillin (MICs, 16 mg mL-1) and sulfamonomethoxine (MICs, 64 mg mL-1), but susceptible to norfloxacin (MICs, 0.5 mg mL-1). There was a high incidence of resistance to erythromycin (90.70%) and tylosin (93.02%), while a low incidences of resistance to ciprofloxacin (2.33%), enrofloxacin (2.33%) and florfenicol (4.65%). Six different outer membrane protein patterns were found among 34 isolates by analyzing proteins in the range of 22 to 50 kDa, other than 9 isolates with their respective profiles. The strains with the similar OMP profiles had similar resistances. Compared with the other strains from the same OMP patterns, NB-1, A.Pun and MR-1 had lacked the proteins in the range of 30 to 45 kDa and their resistance to florfenicol substantially increased. It is speculated that the outer membrane protein changes might correlate with decreased susceptibility to florfenicol in the three strains. Some strains which showed completely identical OMP types had a little difference in their resistance to fluoroquinolones, indicating that there might be other factors that were involved in the antimicrobial resistance of A. hydrophila.