The metabolism of aflatoxin B2 by postmitochondrial supernatant fractions of duck, rat, mouse, and human livers was studied in an in vitro system. Duck liver had a much higher level of activity than had tissues from other species. Postmitochondrial supernatant equivalent to 0.2 g whole liver metabolized 40 to 80% of the initial substrate in 30 min, compared to less than 6% for the other species...

Fat character is an important index in duck culture that linked to local flavor, feed cost and fat intake for costumers. Since the regulation networks in duck lipid metabolism had not been reported very clearly, we aimed to explore the potential miRNA-mRNA pairs and their regulatory roles in duck lipid metabolism. Here, Cherry-Valley ducks were selected and treated with/without 5% oil added in ...

Macroscopic sarcocysts are often observed in ducks, but at present their taxonomic status remains uncertain because ducks serve as intermediate hosts for several such parasites in the genus Sarcocystis . One such species, Sarcocystis rileyi , was long ago established to involve the northern shoveler duck ( Anas clypeata ) and the striped skunk ( Mephitis mephitis ) as its intermediate and defin...

Influenza viruses A/duck/Hokkaido/5/77 (Hav7N2), A/budgerigar/Hokkaido/1/77 (Hav4Nav1), A/Kumamoto/22/76 (H3N2), A/Aichi/2/68 (H3N2), and A/New Jersey/8/76 (Hsw1N1) were experimentally inoculated into Pekin ducks. Of these, the influenza viruses of duck and budgerigar origin replicated in the intestinal tract of the ducks. The infected ducks shed the virus in the feces to high titers, but did n...

Mitochondrial antiviral-signaling protein (MAVS), an adaptor protein of retinoic acid-inducible gene I (RIG-I)-like receptors (RLRs)-mediated signal pathway, is involved in innate immunity. In this study, Cherry Valley duck MAVS (duMAVS) was cloned from the spleen and analyzed. duMAVS was determined to have a caspase activation and recruitment domain at N-terminal, followed by a proline-rich do...

We have analyzed the structures, relative organization, and activities of binding sites for nuclear factors in the duck hepatitis B virus (duck HBV) enhancer. DNase I footprinting analysis and mobility shift assays demonstrate that this enhancer of 192 bp contains at least three binding sites for transcription factors: one for hepatocyte-adipocyte C/EBP, a second for the liver-specific transact...

Polydisperse high-molecular-weight RNA of nucleated avian erythrocytes includes sequences coding for globin chains. The RNA was extracted from immature erythrocytes of ducks and fractionated under denaturing conditions by sucrose density gradient centrifugation in 99% dimethylsulfoxide. The RNA sedimenting faster than 45 S was able to direct the synthesis of duck globins in the Krebs II ascites...

Adjectives are typically felicitous in within-predicate comparisons—constructions of the form ‘X is more A than y’, as in This is bigger than that, but are often infelicitous in between-predicate comparisons—constructions of the form ‘X is more A than (y is) B’, as in *Tweety is bigger than (it is) heavy. Nouns, by contrast, exhibit the inverse pattern. The challenge is to ac...

BACKGROUND Cooking has a great influence on meat tenderness, and we assumed that changes of tenderness in this process resulted from the liberation of actin and associated structural changes. Therefore, in this study, we investigated changes in the microstructure and tenderness when duck breast muscle were cooked to different internal endpoint temperatures (70, 80, 90, 95 °C) by three cooking r...

Diversity, an important issue in higher education admission policy and practice, is addressed in this paper in terms of the construct’s conceptualization and measurement. Several measures of diversity are identified, and a commonly-used demographic measure based on racial classification is examined. Differences among undergraduate students’ diversity seeking behavior associated with living and ...