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Over the past two decades, numerous non-coding RNAs (ncRNAs) have been identified in different biological systems including virology, especially in large DNA viruses such as herpesviruses. As a representative oncogenic alphaherpesvirus, Marek's disease virus (MDV) causes an important immunosuppressive and rapid-onset neoplastic disease of poultry, namely Marek's disease (MD). Vaccinations can efficiently prevent the onset of MD lymphomas and other clinical disease, often heralded as the first successful example of vaccination-based control of cancer. MDV infection is also an excellent model for research into virally-induced tumorigenesis. Recently, great progress has been made in understanding the functions of ncRNAs in MD biology. Herein, we give a review of the discovery and identification of MDV-encoded viral miRNAs, focusing on the genomics, expression profiles, and emerging critical roles of MDV-1 miRNAs as oncogenic miRNAs (oncomiRs) or tumor suppressor genes involved in the induction of MD lymphomas. We also described the involvements of host cellular miRNAs, lincRNAs, and circRNAs participating in MDV life cycle, pathogenesis, and/or tumorigenesis. The prospects, strategies, and new techniques such as the CRISPR/Cas9-based gene editing applicable for further investigation into the ncRNA-mediated regulatory mechanisms in MDV pathogenesis/oncogenesis were also discussed, together with the possibilities of future studies on antiviral therapy and the development of new efficient MD vaccines.

Female solo travel is experiencing a global increase and specifically, gaining popularity in Asia. This study explores how personal values and female solo travel motivation affect travel behavior. Using a sample comprising 381 single females in Taiwan, partial least squares structural equation modeling was utilized to investigate the hypotheses. The results revealed Hypothesis 1 and Hypothesis 3 are supported, which verifies personal internal values significantly affect female solo travel motivation, and are identified as significant factors influencing female solo travel intention. Additionally, Hypothesis 5 is partially support, indicating the female solo travel motivations of escape/relaxation, relationship, and self-actualization contribute to the formation of positive female solo travel intention. As Hypothesis 2 and Hypothesis 4 are unsupported, external values have no impact on female solo travel motivation or any significant effect on female solo travel intention. This research adds to the vast gap in tourism literature by identifying the personal values and motivations of female solo travel, and benefits the development of the female solo travel market.

In the past decade, a large number of microRNAs (miRNAs) have been identified in the viral genome of Gallid herpesvirus 2 (GaHV-2), which is historically known as Marek's disease virus type 1. The biological role of most GaHV-2 miRNAs remains unclear. In the present study, we have performed an overall gene expression profile of GaHV-2 miRNAs during the virus life cycle at each phase of the developing disease, a highly contagious, lymphoproliferative disorder, and neoplastic immunosuppressive disease of poultry known as the Marek's disease. According to their distinct in vivo expression patterns, the GaHV-2 miRNAs can be divided into three groups: 12 miRNAs in group I, including miR-M4-5p, displayed a typical expression pattern potentially correlated to the latent, late cytolytic, and/or the proliferative phases in the cycle of GaHV-2 pathogenesis; group II consisting of another 12 miRNAs with expression correlated to the early cytolytic and/or latent phases in GaHV-2's life cycle; while the other two miRNAs in group III showed no identical expression features. Our findings may provide meaningful clues in the search for further potential functions of viral miRNAs in GaHV-2 biology.

Gallid alphaherpesvirus 2 (GaHV2) is an oncogenic avian herpesvirus inducing Marek’s disease (MD) and rapid-onset T-cell lymphomas. To reveal molecular events in MD pathogenesis and tumorigenesis, the dynamic splenic transcriptome of GaHV2-infected chickens during early infection and pathogenic phases has been determined utilizing RNA-seq. Based on the significant differentially expressed genes (DEGs), analysis of gene ontology, KEGG pathway and protein-protein interaction network has demonstrated that the molecular events happening during GaHV2 infection are highly relevant to the disease course. In the ‘Cornell Model’ description of MD, innate immune responses and inflammatory responses were established at early cytolytic phase but persisted until lymphoma formation. Humoral immunity in contrast began to play a role firstly in the intestinal system and started at late cytolytic phase. Neurological damage caused by GaHV2 is first seen in early cytolytic phase and is then sustained throughout the following phases over a long time period. During the proliferative phase many pathways associated with transcription and/or translation were significantly enriched, reflecting the cell transformation and lymphoma formation. Our work provides an overall view of host responses to GaHV2 infection and offers a meaningful basis for further studies of MD biology.

Marek's disease is a highly contagious, oncogenic, and immunosuppressive avian viral disease. Surveillance of newly registered Marek's disease virus (MDV) isolates is meaningful for revealing the potential factors involved in increased virulence. Presently, we have focused on the molecular characteristics of all available MDVs from China, including 17 new Henan isolates. Based on Meq, gE, and gI genes, we found that most Chinese isolates contain conserved amino acid point mutations in Meq, such as E(77), A(115), A(139), R(176), and A(217), compared to USA virulent MDVs. However, the 59-aa or 60-aa insertions are only found in a few mild MDVs rather than virulent MDVs in China. Further phylogenetic analysis has demonstrated that a different genotype of MDV has been prevalent in China, and for virulent MDVs, their recent evolution has possibly been geographically restricted. Our study has provided more detailed information regarding the field MDVs circulating in China.

A method for the selective separation of polychlorinated naphthalene (PCNs), hexabromocyclododecanes (HBCDs) and tetrabromobisphenol A (TBBPA) in complex matrices was developed. In the present study, the type of sorbents and the volume and composition of eluting solvents were investigated in detail. Under the optimal conditions, the recoveries of PCNs, HBCDs and TBBPA in different fractions were determined with liquid/gas chromatography tandem mass spectrometry (LC or GC-MS/MS), which was nearly close to 100%. To investigate the feasibility of the developed method, it was applied to isolate target compounds from spiked soil extracts. PCNs, HBCDs and TBBPA could be subsequently eluted with hexane, hexane/dichloromethane (1:1), and hexane/dichloromethane (1:3), and the recoveries of the analysts from three fractions were satisfactory (70.9%–107%) with the exception of γ-HBCD at low levels. The results indicated that the method exhibited good performance for the selective separation of PCNs, HBCDs and TBBPA and showed great potential in sample pretreatment in terms of alleviating influence from different class of impurities to some extent.

The rule of adjunction is intuitively appealing and uncontroversial for deductive inference, but in situations where information can be uncertain, the rule is neither needed nor wanted for rational acceptance, as illustrated by the lottery paradox. Practical certainty is the acceptance of statements whose chances of error are smaller than a prescribed threshold parameter, when evaluated against an evidential corpus. We examine the failure of adjunction in relation to the threshold parameter for practical certainty, with an eye towards reinstating the rule of adjunction in some restricted forms, by observing the conditions under which the overall chance of error of the joint statements can be variously bounded.

MicroRNAs (miRNAs) are the recently discovered small non-coding RNA molecules that have post-transcriptional regulatory functions in many important biological processes. A large number of miRNAs have been found to be encoded by viral genomes, especially in herpesviruses. Previous research regarding miRNAs encoded by herpesviruses, including Marek's disease virus (MDV), has demonstrated their involvement in lytic replication, latent infection, T-lymphocyte transformation and tumorigenesis. MDV is an oncogenic alphaherpesvirus, with the ability to induce tumors in natural hosts; however, formation of these tumors can be prevented by immunization with attenuated or nonpathogenic forms of the virus. Marek's disease is considered to be a good biomedical model for investigating the biology, genetics, and immunology of tumorigenesis. In this paper, we review the discovery and identification of MDV-encoded miRNAs, along with their genomics, expression profiles, and currently known functions. We also discuss the prospects and techniques possibly applicable to the further investigation of the biological roles of MDV-encoded miRNAs.

An efficient vector, designated as pCAGX, was designed for direct cloning and enhanced expression of PCR-amplified ORFs in mammalian cells. It relied on the well-known TA-cloning principle, and utilized the CMV enhancer/chicken beta-actin/rabbit beta-globin (CAG) hybrid promoter instead of the classical CMV promoter to drive more efficient transgene expression in wider host cells. The specially designed cassette under CAG hybrid promoter contained two tandemly arrayed XcmI sites which were spaced by an additional EcoRV site. For direct cloning and expressing PCR-amplified ORFs, the T-vector was prepared by further digesting the EcoRV-linearized pCAGX with XcmI to produce T tails on both 3'-ends, which could efficiently minimize the non-recombinant background of T-vector and eliminate the necessity of selective marker genes such as LacZ that allowed blue/white screening. Various PCR fragments in length were prepared to verify the cloning efficiency by ligation with this vector, and GFP gene expression under control of the CAG hybrid promoter in different host cells was assayed by flow cytometry. The results indicated that this vector was higher efficient, especially suitable for cloning and expressing a number of interesting ORFs in parallel, and higher-level transgene expression in different mammalian cells was obtained than the reported vectors using the CMV promoter.

The evolutionary position of Giardia lamblia has been challenged in recent years. Comparison of the snoRNAs identified from Archaea and unicellular eukaryotes shows that G. lamblia snoRNAs are more similar in most respects to the counterparts identified from Dictyostelium discoideum, Plasmodium falciparum, fungi, and some metazoans, remarkably differently from those of Euglenozoa protozoans. We propose that G. lamblia emerged somewhat later than Trypanosoma and Euglena during the early evolution of "excavata" eukaryotes.

We argue that current discussions of criteria for actual causation are ill-posed in several respects. (1) The methodology of current discussions is by induc- tion from intuitions about an infinitesimal fraction of the possible examples and coun- terexamples; (2) cases with larger numbers of causes generate novel puzzles; (3) "neuron" and causal Bayes net diagrams are, as deployed in discussions of actual causation, almost always ambiguous; (4) actual causation is (intuitively) relative to an initial system state since state changes are relevant, but most current accounts ignore state changes through time; (5) more generally, there is no reason to think that philosophical judgements about these sorts of cases are normative; but (6) there is a dearth of relevant psychological research that bears on whether various philosophical accounts are descriptive. Our skepticism is not directed towards the possibility of a

In this paper, the infectivity and propagation of two attenuated infectious bursal disease virus (IBDV) strains in DT40 cells were investigated. The results showed that both of the tested strains, TAD and HN(3), directly infect and proliferate in DT40 cells, requiring no adaptive passages. Unexpectedly, IBDV can be rapidly propagated and continuously harvested at high titers for a long time, accompanied by the rapid growth of host cells and showing no increase in pathogenicity. Our results provide further support to suggest that DT40 cells can be used as an ideal model for studying IBDV pathogenesis. Additionally, the DT40 cell line could also serve as a potential system for commercial IBDV vaccine preparation.