(Co)variance components were estimated for visual scores of conformation (CY), early finishing (PY) and muscling (MY) at 550 days of age (yearling), average daily gain from weaning to yearling (GWY), conformation (CW), early finishing (PW) and muscling (MW) scores at weaning, and average daily gain from birth to weaning (GBW) in animals forming the Brazilian Brangus breed born between 1986 and ...

Myostatin, a member of the TGF-beta family, negatively regulates skeletal muscle development. Depression of myostatin activity leads to increased muscle growth and carcass lean yield. In an attempt to down-regulate myostatin, transgenic mice were produced with a ribozyme-based construct or a myostatin pro domain construct. Though the expression of the ribozyme was detected, muscle development w...

Embryonic skeletal muscle development has become a paradigm for understanding the molecular basis of how cell lineages are established and how cells differentiate into specialized structures. Most vertebrate muscles are derived from individual somites that produce two distinct muscle populations: the myotomal muscles that generate the axial and trunk musculature and a second migratory cell popu...

OUR COMPREHENSION of how genetic factors influence a person’s susceptibility to complex disease has evolved markedly during the past 20 years. Major advances in molecular genetics technologies have contributed greatly to this process, as have improvements in phenotyping methods and statistical algorithms used in the analysis of quantitative genetics data. Although genetics studies that focus on...

Selective breeding programs aiming to increase the productivity and profitability of the sheep meat industry use elite, progeny tested sires. The broad genetic traits of primary interest in the progeny of these sires include skeletal muscle yield, fat content, eating quality, and reproductive efficiency. Natural mutations in sheep that enhance muscling have been identified, while a number of ge...

Interest in selection for improved feed efficiency is increasing, but before any steps are taken toward selecting for feed efficiency, correlations with other economically important traits must first be quantified. The objective of this study was to quantify the genetic associations between feed efficiency measured during performance testing and linear type traits, BW, live animal value, and ca...

‎an  oriented perfect path double cover (oppdc) of a‎ ‎graph $g$ is a collection of directed paths in the symmetric‎ ‎orientation $g_s$ of‎ ‎$g$ such that‎ ‎each arc‎ ‎of $g_s$ lies in exactly one of the paths and each‎ ‎vertex of $g$ appears just once as a beginning and just once as an‎ ‎end of a path‎. ‎maxov{'a} and ne{v{s}}et{v{r}}il (discrete‎ ‎math‎. ‎276 (2004) 287-294) conjectured that ...