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Successful artificial insemination requires successful sperm collection, evaluation and the addition of preservatives toincrease sperm shelf life. Despite many efforts and addition of protective and antioxidant substances, the quality of frozen-thawed sperm is low and the resulting fertility is not acceptable. For this reason, in present research, the cooling method has been used instead of freezing. The aim of this investigation was to evaluate the effect of apricot gum adding to Tris-base diluents on liquid ram semen storage and ewes pregnancy rate. Twenty-five ejaculates were collected from 5 Ghezel rams by artificial vagina in Khalatpushan research station. Average age of rams was 3 years. Semen samples were collected two times per week. After rapid transferring of samples to the laboratory they were evaluated for traits such as volume, wave motion, viability, morphology, total motility, progressive motility, pH and sperm concentration. Diluted semen was divided into four equal parts. One of parts contained only a diluent based on Tris (control group). Into the three treated parts, apricot Gum were added in concentrations of 100µl, 150µl, 200µl per ml diluted sperm (treated groups) and these cases were compared with the control part. In this investigation, it was observed that adding apricot gum at all concentrations of 100,150 and 200µl did not any significant effect on sperm quality up to the third day after cooling in Tris-based diluents (P>0.05), but after the third day of cooling significantly improved sperm quality parameters such as viability, total motility, progressive motility, morphology and membrane health (P<0.05). The differences among treatments parts with different apricot gum concentrations were not significant (P>0.05). In this study, 12 ewes were divided into 4 groups (n=3 ewes) and every group was artificially inseminated by cervical approach with one of diluted sperm parts. The number of pregnancy in ewes inseminated with 0 (control part), 100, 150 and 200µl apricot gum concentrations parts were, 1, 2, 2 and 3 respectively .In general, the results of this study showed that the addition of Apricot Gum to Tris-based diluents increases the quality in short time storage of ram liquid semen. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Introduction: In this study, we targeted the worm stage of Echinococcus granulosus to design a novel multi-epitope B- and helper T-cell based vaccine construct for immunization of dogs against this multi-host parasite. Methods: The vaccine was designed based on the local Eg14-3-3 antigen (Ag). DNA samples were extracted from the protoscoleces of the infected sheep's liver, and then subjected to the polymerase chain reaction (PCR) with 14-3-3 specific forward and reverse primers. For the vaccine designing, several in silico steps were undertaken. Three-dimensional (3D) structure of the local Eg14-3-3 Ag was modeled by EasyModeller software. The protein modeling accuracy was then analyzed via various validation assays. Potential transmembrane helix, signal peptide, post-translational modifications and allergenicity of Eg14-3-3 were evaluated as the preliminary measures of B-cell epitopes (BEs) prediction. High ranked linear and conformational BEs were utilized for engineering the final vaccine construct. Possible T-helper epitopes (TEs) were identified by the molecular docking between 13-mer fragments of the Eg14-3-3 Ag and two high frequent dog class II MHC alleles (i.e., DLA-DRB1*01101 and DRB1*01501). The epitopes coverage was evaluated by Shannon's variability plot. Results: The final designed construct was analyzed based on the different physicochemical properties, and was then codon optimized for high-level expression in Escherichia coli k12. This minigene construct is the first dog-specific epitopic vaccine that is established based on the TEs with high-binding affinity to canine MHC alleles. Conclusion: This in silico study is the first part of a multi-antigenic vaccine designing work that represents a novel dog-specific vaccine against E. granulosus. Here, we provided key data on the step-by-step methodologies used for designing this de novo vaccine, which is under comprehensive in vivo investigations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]