The Tibetan cashmere goat (Capra hircus), one of the most ancient breeds in China, has historically been a critical source of meat and cashmere production for local farmers. To adapt to the high-altitude area, extremely harsh climate, and hypoxic environment that the Tibetan cashmere goat lives in, this goat has developed distinct phenotypic traits compared to lowland breeds. However, the genetic components underlying this phenotypic adaptation remain largely unknown. We obtained 118,700 autosomal SNPs through exome sequencing of 330 cashmere goats located at a wide geographic range, including the Tibetan Plateau and low-altitude regions in China. The great majority of SNPs showed low genetic differentiation among populations; however, approximately 2-3 % of the loci showed more genetic differentiation than expected under a selectively neutral model. Together with a combined analysis of high- and low-altitude breeds, we revealed 339 genes potentially under high-altitude selection. Genes associated with cardiovascular system development were significantly enriched in our study. Among these genes, the most evident one was endothelial PAS domain protein 1 (EPAS1), which has been previously reported to be involved in complex oxygen sensing and significantly associated with high-altitude adaptation of human, dog, and grey wolf. The missense mutation Q579L that we identified in EPAS1, which occurs next to the Hypoxia-Inducible Factor-1 (HIF-1) domain, was exclusively enriched in the high-altitude populations. Our study provides insights concerning the population variation in six different cashmere goat populations in China. The variants in cardiovascular system-related genes may explain the observed phenotypic adaptation of the Tibetan cashmere goat.

To investigate the effects of betaine on HeLa cell growth and apoptosis and molecular mechanisms. Concentrations of 0.1, 1.0, 5.0, 20.0, 100.0 mg/ml of betaine were used to evaluate the anticancer efficacy for HeLa cells respectively, and MCF-10A was also detected as a normal diploid cell control. We found that proliferation of HeLa cells was inhibited significantly upon exposure to increasing betaine levels with the MTT test (p5.0mg/ml) significantly promoted the apoptosis of HeLa cells (p<0.01). SOD activities of the low dose groups were slightly higher than the control group (p<0.05) and there were obvious synchronicity and correlation among the expression of promoting apoptosis genes Bax, P53, Caspase 3 and apoptosis suppression gene Bcl-2. In response to an apoptosis-inducing stimulus, p53 and cyclin D1 could be activated with blockage of the cell cycle at G1/S or S/G2 checkpoints. Our data showed that betaine could promote HeLa cells proliferation in vitro at low concentrations.In contrast, high concentrations could significantly inhibit cell growth and migration, and induce apoptosis of HeLa cells through caspase 3 signaling and further promoted necrosis. This might imply that betaine exhibits tumoricidal effects and acts as a biological response modifier in cancer treatment by inducing apoptosis and cell cycle arrest in a dose and time-dependent manner.

Adipose-derived stem cells/adipose-derived progenitor cells (ADPCs) are multipotent stem cells that can differentiate in vitro into many cell types. However, the vast majority of experimental materials were obtained from human, mouse, rabbit, and other mammals but rarely from poultry. In this study, ADPCs were isolated from 1-day-old chicks. Primary ADPCs were subcultured to passage 15. The surface markers of ADPCs, CD29, CD44, CD71, and CD73, were detected by immunofluorescence and RT-polymerase chain reaction assays. The growth curves of different passages were all typically sigmoidal. In addition, ADPCs of different passages were successfully induced to differentiate into osteoblasts, adipocytes, and myocardial cells. The results suggest that the ADPCs isolated from chicken possess similar biological characteristics with those derived from other species, and their multilineage differentiation provides many potential applications.

Reversine, a purine analog, had been evidenced that it could induce dedifferentiation of differentiated cells into multipotent progenitor cells. Here, we showed that reversine could increase the plasticity of long-term cryopreserved bovine fibroblasts, and reversine-treated cells achieved the ability to differentiate into all three germ layers cells, such as osteoblasts and adipocytes from mesoblast, neurocyte from ectoderm, hepatocytes and smooth muscle cells from endoderm. Moreover, treatment of reversine caused the grow arrest of fibroblasts at G2/M and distinct cell swelling resulting in the formation of polyploid cells. In parallel, reversine treatment induced a multipotency of fibroblasts might be attributed to the activation of histone modifications, especially the degression of DNA methylation. However, molecular and cellular experiments suggested that reversine treatment enhanced selectively the expression of pluripotent marker gene Oct4 and mesenchymal marker genes CD29, CD44 and CD73, but Sox2 and Nanog were not detected. Taken together, these results clearly demonstrate the ability of reversine to dedifferentiation of long-term cryopreserved somatic cells through activation of pluripotent gene Oct4.