Pregnancy-Associated Changes of IgG and Serum N-Glycosylation in Camel (Camelus dromedarius)

Ultrasonography for the detection of pregnancy and study of embryonic and fetal development in camels, buffaloes, and sheep: Techniques, equations, and limitations

New technologies for detecting pregnancy shortly after mating/insemination and identifying gestational age are essential for speeding up the reproductive cycle and ensuring high reproductive efficiency in livestock farming. Ultrasonography can successfully identify pregnancy and determine gestational age in many domestic animals. On the other hand, many herds of camel and buffalo and flocks of sheep are aware of the day of service, making it difficult to appropriately manage pregnant animals. This study provides a review of the literature on various techniques for ultrasonographically diagnosing pregnancy in camels, buffaloes, and sheep, focusing on the most appropriate times to use each technique, the earliest opportunity to diagnose pregnancy, and the possibility of using various parts of the fetus to create mathematical equations to determine gestational age. Some limitations of ultrasonography in pregnancy diagnosis were identified and significant pregnancy events in dromedaries were discussed, including left-horn and twin pregnancies. The data presented here will prove essential for researchers, farmers, and countries that rely heavily on these animals for providing meat, milk, cosmetics, and other animal products to enhance reproduction and production efficiency.

Pregnancy diagnosis and sex identification with urinary glycopatterns of two mammal species

Glycome in urine could be promising biomarkers for detecting pregnancy diagnosis and sex noninvasively for animals, especially for rare species. We explore the applicability of grouping golden snub-nosed monkeys by sex or diagnosing pregnancy based on their urinary glycopatterns, which are determined via lectin microarray combining mass spectrometry analysis. Sprague-Dawley rats are used to verify whether this approach and whether the glycomic biomarkers can be generalized to other mammalian species. The results show that, for both species, lectin microarray combining mass spectrometry can distinguish individuals' pregnancy status and sex; significant differences are found in the types, amounts, and terminal modification of glycans between pregnant and non-pregnant females and between females and males. This indicates the approach could be generalized to other mammalian species to group sex and detect pregnancy, yet the glycopatterns appear to be species-specific and markers developed from one species may not be directly applicable to another.

Glycans in spent embryo culture medium are related to the implantation ability of blastocysts

Research question

Does glycan profile in spent blastocyst culture medium have the potential to be used as a biomarker to predict implantation outcome.

Design

A nested case-control study was conducted in Northwest women's and children's Hospital, Xi'an, China. The patients underwent fresh IVF/ICSI cycles with single blastocyst transfer were included. Total 78 cases were included and separated into groups according to success (n = 39) and failure (n = 39) implantation outcomes. The glycosylation patterns in spent blastocyst culture medium were detected by lectin microarray containing 37 lectins using pooled samples and confirmed by reversed lectin microarray using individual sample.

Results

Binding signals of 10 lectins were found to be different between samples from successful and failed implantation. And 8 of them were confirmed that glycans binding to lectin NPA, UEA-I, MAL-I, LCA and GNA were significantly increased while DBA and BPL were decreased in the successful implantation compared to failed implantation. The glycan binding to lectin PHA-E + L had no difference between two groups. No significant differences in the glycan profile were found in spent culture medium of embryos with different morphological grades except the glycan binding to UEA-I between blastocysts of Poor and blastocysts of Medium.

Conclusion

Detection of glycan profile in spent culture medium may lead to a novel non-invasive assessment assay of embryo viability. In addition, these results may be helpful to further understanding molecular mechanisms in embryo implantation.

Zoonotic Animal Influenza Virus and Potential Mixing Vessel Hosts

Influenza viruses belong to the family Orthomyxoviridae with a negative-sense, single-stranded segmented RNA genome. They infect a wide range of animals, including humans. From 1918 to 2009, there were four influenza pandemics, which caused millions of casualties. Frequent spillover of animal influenza viruses to humans with or without intermediate hosts poses a serious zoonotic and pandemic threat. The current SARS-CoV-2 pandemic overshadowed the high risk raised by animal influenza viruses, but highlighted the role of wildlife as a reservoir for pandemic viruses. In this review, we summarize the occurrence of animal influenza virus in humans and describe potential mixing vessel or intermediate hosts for zoonotic influenza viruses. While several animal influenza viruses possess a high zoonotic risk (e.g., avian and swine influenza viruses), others are of low to negligible zoonotic potential (e.g., equine, canine, bat and bovine influenza viruses). Transmission can occur directly from animals, particularly poultry and swine, to humans or through reassortant viruses in "mixing vessel" hosts. To date, there are less than 3000 confirmed human infections with avian-origin viruses and less than 7000 subclinical infections documented. Likewise, only a few hundreds of confirmed human cases caused by swine influenza viruses have been reported. Pigs are the historic mixing vessel host for the generation of zoonotic influenza viruses due to the expression of both avian-type and human-type receptors. Nevertheless, there are a number of hosts which carry both types of receptors and can act as a potential mixing vessel host. High vigilance is warranted to prevent the next pandemic caused by animal influenza viruses.

Characterization of O-acetylation in sialoglycans by MALDI-MS using a combination of methylamidation and permethylation

O-Acetylation of sialic acid in protein N-glycans is an important modification and can occur at either 4-, 7-, 8- or 9-position in various combinations. This modification is usually labile under alkaline reaction conditions. Consequently, a permethylation-based analytical method, which has been widely used in glycomics studies, is not suitable for profiling O-acetylation of sialic acids due to the harsh reaction conditions. Alternatively, methylamidation can be used for N-glycan analysis without affecting the base-labile modification of sialic acid. In this report, we applied both permethylation and methylamidation approaches to the analysis of O-acetylation in sialic acids. It has been demonstrated that methylamidation not only stabilizes sialic acids during MALDI processing but also allow for characterization of their O-acetylation pattern. In addition, LC-MS/MS experiments were carried out to distinguish between the O-acetylated glycans with potential isomeric structures. The repeatability of methylamidation was examined to evaluate the applicability of the approach to profiling of O-acetylation in sialic acids. In conclusion, the combination of methylamidation and permethylation methodology is a powerful MALDI-TOF MS-based tool for profiling O-acetylation in sialic acids applicable to screening of N-glycans.