Two forms of gonadotropin-releasing hormone (GnRH), GnRH-I and GnRH-II, are commonly present in mammals. The main hormone controlling reproduction is GnRH-I acting through its receptor (GnRHR-I), whereas the function of GnRH-II is unknown. In primates, it has been suggested that GnRH-II is a specific agonist for the structurally distinct GnRHR-II. Here we compared effects of GnRH-I and GnRH-II ...

Lamprey GnRH-I and lamprey GnRH-III are the only two members of the GnRH family to have substitutions in the sixth position, Glu6 and Asp6, respectively; all other GnRH peptides have Gly in the sixth position suggesting a different conformational structure. Thus, a structure-activity study of lamprey GnRH-I or analogs that were cyclized or with sixth position substitutions were determined in vi...

Although the movement of invasive bighead carp (Hypophthalmichthys nobilis) and silver carp (H. molitrix) in the Upper Mississippi River system is dependent on their ability to swim through its numerous lockanddams, the swimming performance of adults of these species is at present unknown. Using a large (2,935L) mobile swim tunnel, the swimming performance of adult bighead and adult silver carp...

With the exception of modern mammals, most vertebrate species possess two GnRH genes, GnRH-1 and GnRH-2. In addition, in many teleost fish, there is a third gene called GnRH-3. If the main function of GnRH-1 is unambiguously to stimulate gonadotropin release, the other two GnRH forms still lack clear functions. This is particularly true for the highly conserved GnRH-2 that encodes chicken GnRH-...

AIMS It has been reported that cardiac ankyrin repeat protein is associated with heart development and diseases. This study is aimed to investigate the role of CARP in heart hypertrophy in vivo. METHODS AND RESULTS We generated a cardiac-specific CARP-overexpressing transgenic mouse. Although such animals did not display any overt physiological abnormality, they developed less cardiac hypertr...

In many species of aquaculture importance, all-female and sterile populations possess superior productivity due to faster growth and a relatively homogenous size of individuals. However, the production of all-female and sterile fish in a large scale for aquaculture is a challenge in practice, because treatments necessary for gynogenesis induction usually cause massive embryonic and larval morta...

In lakes of the Upper Mississippi River Basin (UMRB), invasive common carp (Cyprinus carpio) employ a reproductive strategy in which adults migrate out of lakes to spawn in seasonally unstable marshes that have few egg and larval predators. The rates with which the juveniles outmigrate from marshes into adjacent lakes have critical management implications but have not been quantified using dire...

The precursor protein of egg yolk, vitellogenin (Vg), is cleaved into three major components (lipovitellin, phosvitin and beta'-component) at the time of incorporation by growing oocytes. We purified three yolk proteins (YP1, YP2 and YP3) from ovaries of the common carp (Cyprinus carpio) by a combined method of ammonium sulfate precipitation and column chromatography. Biochemical analyses of th...

In order to control cyanobacteria blooms with silver carp in Lake Taihu, an in situ experiment was carried out by stocking silver carp at a biomass of 35, 70, and 150 g m-3 and no carp control in waterproof enclosures. Physicochemical water parameters and biomass of plankton were measured in enclosures to evaluate the suitable stocking density of silver carp for relieving internal nutrients and...

Abstract The objective was to compare pregnancy rates (PR) on day 30 and loss between days 60 (PL) after timed artificial insemination (TAI; 0) using 2 synchronization protocols, plasma progesterone 18 in suckled beef cows. Angus cows were randomly assigned either 7-d CoSynch (7-d P + GnRH) or 8-d estradiol (8-d ES) protocols for TAI. On -10, the GnRH treatment group (n=574) received a progeste...