No abstract

No abstract

The gut microbiota is a complex ecological community and widely recognized in many aspects of research, but little is known on the relation between gut microbiota and embryonic development in chickens. The aim of this study was to explore the dynamic distribution of gut microbiota in chickens' embryos during stages of developments (chicken embryos that had incubated until day 3 [E3], day 12 [E12], and day 19 [E19]). Here, 16S rRNA gene sequencing was performed on the gut microbiota in chicken embryos across different developmental stages. Twenty-one phyla and 601 genera were present in chicken embryos, and 96 genera such as Ochrobactrum , Phyllobacterium, and Amycolatopsis were the core microbiota in the 3 stages of development. Second, 94 genera of microbes were found to change significantly between E3 and E12, and 143 genera significantly differed between E12 and E19 in chicken embryos ( P < 0.05). Ochrobactrum and Amycolatopsis decreased with growth changes: E3 (30.4%), E12 (25.1%), and E19 (13.6%) and E3 (11.5%), E12 (7.4%), and E19 (5.6%), respectively. Contrarily, Phyllobacterium increased to 47.9% at E19, indicating the growing trend of microbial diversity among the embryos' development. Moreover, the principal component analysis showed a high level of similarities between E3 and E12 compared with E19, whereas the alpha analysis showed more diversity of gut microbiota at E19. Furthermore, the functional predictions showed that metabolic pathways such as energy metabolism and genetic information processing were significantly enriched on day 3 and day 12 in our study, suggesting their strong influence on growth, development, and immunity of chicken embryos. Our findings provide insights into the understanding of dynamic shifts of gut microbiota during chicken embryonic growth.

No abstract

ZnSe nitrogen-doped carbon composite nanofibers (ZnSe@N-CNFs) were derived as anode materials from selenization of electrospinning nanofibers. Electron microscopy shows that ZnSe nanoparticles are distributed in electrospinning nanofibers after selenization. Electrochemistry tests were carried out and the results show the one-dimensional carbon composite nanofibers reveal a great structural stability and electrochemistry performance by the enhanced synergistic effect with ZnSe. Even at a current density of 2 A g −1 , the as-prepared electrodes can still reach up to 701.7 mA h g −1 after 600 cycles in lithium-ion batteries and 368.9 mA h g −1 after 200 cycles in sodium-ion batteries, respectively. ZnSe@N-CNFs with long cycle life and high capacity at high current density implies its promising future for the next generation application of energy storage.

Single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) are essential to the understanding of population genetic variation and diversity. Here, we performed restriction-site-associated DNA sequencing (RAD-seq) on 72 individuals from 13 Chinese indigenous and three introduced chicken breeds. A total of 620 million reads were obtained using an Illumina Hiseq2000 sequencer. An average of 75,587 SNPs were identified from each individual. Further filtering strictly validated 28,895 SNPs candidates for all populations. When compared with the NCBI dbSNP (chicken_9031), 15,404 SNPs were new discoveries. In this study, RAD-seq was performed for the first time on chickens, implicating the remarkable effectiveness and potential applications on genetic analysis and breeding technique for whole-genome selection in chicken and other agricultural animals.

No abstract

No abstract