Feedomics provides bidirectional omics strategies between genetics and nutrition for improved production in cattle

Increasing the efficiency and sustainability of cattle production is an effective way to produce valuable animal proteins for a growing human population.Genetics and nutrition are the 2 major research topics in selecting cattle with beneficial phenotypes and developing genetic potentials for improved performance.There is an inextricable link between genetics and nutrition,which urgently requires researchers to uncover the underlying molecular mechanisms to optimize cattle production.Feedomics integrates a range of omic techniques to reveal the mechanisms at different molecular levels related to animal production and health,which can provide novel insights into the relationships of genes and nutrition/nutrients.In this review,we summarized the applications of feedomics techniques to reveal the effect of genetic elements on the response to nutrition and investigate how nutrients affect the functional genome of cattle from the perspective of both nutrigenetics and nutrigenomics.We highlighted the roles of rumen microbiome in the interactions between host genes and nutrition.Herein,we discuss the importance of feedomics in cattle nutrition research,with a view to ensure that cattle exhibit the best production traits for human consumption from both genetic and nutritional aspects.

Research on Gliding Aerodynamic Effect of Deformable Membrane Wing for a Robotic Flying Squirrel

Inspired by creatures with membrane to obtain ultra-high gliding ability, this paper presents a robotic flying squirrel （a novel gliding robot） characterized as membrane wing and active membrane deformation. For deep understanding of membrane wing and gliding mechanism from a robotic system perspective, a simplified blocking aerodynamic model of the deformable membrane wing and CFD simulation are finished. In addition, a physical prototype is developed and wind tunnel experiments are carried out. The results show that the proposed membrane wing is able to support the gliding action of the robot. Meanwhile, factors including geometry characteristics, material property and wind speed are considered in the experiments to investigate the aerodynamic effects of the deformable membrane wing deeply. As a typical characteristic of robotic flying squirrel, deformation modes of the membrane wing not only affect the gliding ability, but also directly determine the effects of the posture adjustment. Moreover, different deformation modes of membrane wing are illustrated to explore the possible effects of active membrane deformation on the gliding performance. The results indicate that the deformation modes have a significant impact on posture adjustment, which reinforces the rationality of flying squirrel＇s gliding strategy and provides valuable information on prototype optimal design and control strategy in the actual gliding process.

Design and synthesis of selective sphingosine-1-phosphate receptor 1 agonists with increased phosphorylation rates

FTY720 and IMMH002,prodrugs for sphingosine-1-phosphate receptor 1(S1P1)agonists,show inadequate and inconsistent levels of phosphorylation in humans compared to that in rats.In this study,FTY720 or IMMH002 analogues(21-24)were designed and synthesized with modified head pieces to improve the biotransformation of the prodrugs to the active phosphorylated forms.Target compounds were synthesized via a convergent route using the key and optically pure building block 9,which was first synthesized via asymmetrically catalyzed amination.The phosphorylation rates of these analogues in rat or human blood were compared.The new methyl-substituted analogue compound 21 showed higher phosphorylation rates in both rats and humans than the parent compound,whereas compound 23 showed improvements in rats,but not in humans.In pharmacokinetics studies of rats,compounds 21 and 23 both had higher levels of phosphorylation than FTY720 and IMMH002.Thus,our study not only yielded new compounds with therapeutic potential,but also showed species differences between rats and humans in response to the structural modifications,which might be useful for predicting the biotransformation behavior and efficacy of this class of prodrugs in the clinic.

Music Auto-Tagging with Capsule Network

In recent years,convolutional neural networks(CNNs)become popular approaches used in music information retrieval(MIR)tasks,such as mood recognition,music auto-tagging and so on.Since CNNs are able to extract the local features effectively,previous attempts show great performance on music auto-tagging.However,CNNs is not able to capture the spatial features and the relationship between low-level features are neglected.Motivated by this problem,a hybrid architecture is proposed based on Capsule Network,which is capable to extract spatial features with the routing-by-agreement mechanism.The proposed model was applied in music auto-tagging.The results show that it achieves promising results of the ROC-AUC score of 90.67%.