Hunduma Dinka

Adama Science and Technology University | ASTU · Applied Biology

Background The protective effectiveness of vector control in malaria relies on how the implemented tools overlap with mosquito species-specific compositions and bionomic traits. In Ethiopia, targeted entomological data enabling strategic decision-making are lacking around high-risk migrant worker camps in the lowlands and resident communities in th...

Background Coxiella burnetii is causing infections in both humans and animals, resulting in Q fever and Coxiellosis, respectively. Information on the occurrence of C. burnetii infection is scarce in Ethiopia. This study estimated the sero-prevalence of C. burnetii infection and associated risk factors in four common livestock species from Addis Aba...

Poultry’s digestive tract lacks hydrolytic phytase enzymes, which results in chelation of dietary minerals, vital amino acids, proteins, and carbohydrates, phytate-phosphate unavailability, and contamination of the environment due to phosphorus. Therefore, it is necessary to use exogenous microbial phytases as feed additive to chicken feed to catal...

Poultry's digestive tract lacks hydrolytic phytase enzymes, which results in chelation of dietary minerals, vital amino acids, proteins, and carbohydrates, phytate-phosphate unavailability, and contamination of the environment due to phosphorus. Therefore, it is necessary to use exogenous microbial phytases as feed additive to chicken feed to catal...

Background: Newcastle disease (ND) is a highly infectious poultry disease that causes major economic losses worldwide. The disease is caused by Newcastle Disease Virus (NDV) and early detection and identification of the viral strain is essential. Having knowledge of the NDV strain genotype that circulates in some regions would help in designing an...

Streptococcus pneumoniae (S. pneumoniae) is an important pathogen worldwide that causes pneumococcal infections which are related to high rates of morbidity and mortality especially in young children, older adults, and immune-compromised persons. Antibiotic resistance in S. pneumoniae is a serious problem across the world from time to time, resulti...

Anopheles stephensi, an Asian malaria vector, continues to expand across Africa. The vector is now firmly established in urban settings in the Horn of Africa. Its presence in areas where malaria resurged suggested a possible role in causing malaria outbreaks. Using a prospective case control design, we investigated the role of An. stephensi in tran...

Non-conservative K232A substitution in the diacylglycerol acyl-CoA acyltransferase 1 (DGAT1) gene has been reported to explain variation in milk traits in cattle. The objective of this study was to estimate allele and genotype frequencies and to assess associations between K232A variants and milk yield and composition in cattle populations of Ethio...

Anopheles stephensi , an Asian urban malaria vector, continues to expand across Africa. We investigated the role of An. stephensi in malaria transmission following a dry season outbreak in Dire Dawa, Ethiopia, from April to July 2022, using a prospective case control design. Plasmodium falciparum microscopy-positive febrile patients (n = 101) and m...

Bovine prolactin (PRL) gene is essential for the initiation and maintenance of lactation and exerts multiple effects on mammary alveoli to promote the synthesis and secretion of major components of milk. The objectives of this study were to identify mutations in PRL gene and to evaluate the mutations as potential markers of milk performance traits...

Background Mycobacterium colombiense is an acid-fast, non-motile, rod-shaped mycobacterium confirmed to cause respiratory disease and disseminated infection in immune-compromised patients, and lymphadenopathy in immune-competent children. It has virulence mechanisms that allow them to adapt, survive, replicate, and produce diseases in the host. To...

Understanding the reproductive physiology of female animals is used to optimize reproductive management of dairy cattle. This study was conducted at Adea Berga Dairy Research sub Center of the Ethiopian Institute of Agricultural Research. A total of 15 experimental animals were used to characterize the follicular dynamics of Fogera (n=9) and Jersey...

Background Plasmodium falciparum resistance to series of anti-malarial drugs is a major challenge in efforts to control and/or eliminate malaria globally. In 1998, following the widespread of chloroquine (CQ) resistant P. falciparum , Ethiopia switched from CQ to sulfadoxine–pyrimethamine (SP) and subsequently in 2004 from SP to artemether–lumefant...

Abstract Background: Diacylglycerol acyl-CoA acyltransferase 1 (DGAT1) has become a promising candidate gene for milk production traits because of its important role as a key enzyme in catalyzing the final step of triglyceride synthesis.Thus use of bovine DGAT1 gene as milk production markers in cattle is well established. However, there is no repo...

From very beginning, animal tissue engineering was emerged from the need for replacement or reconstruction of damaged tissue by trauma, congenital diseases, or cancer in children and adults. The cell, scaffold, and signaling biomolecule are the principal components required for tissue reconstruction. In animal tissue engineering, the most promising...

In order to replicate physiological circumstances in an in vitro model, engineered animal tissue is employed to replace damaged tissues or organs. By switching from a 2D to a 3D cell culture system, this has been accomplished. Animal tissue engineering now has a strong and feasible platform in the shape of a 3D cell culture system with microfluidic...

Background: Melanoma Antigen Genes (MAGEs) are a family of genes that have piqued the interest of scientists for their unique expression pattern. The MAGE genes can be classified into type I MAGEs that expressed in testis and other reproductive tissues while type II MAGEs that have broad expression in many tissues. Several MAGE gene families are e...

Background: Despite significant progress achieved globally in reducing malaria burden, still it is one of the major public health and economic problems in Ethiopia. Investigation of the local genetic polymorphism of P. falciparum, the most virulent and predominant malaria parasite primarily targeted in malaria control and elimination program, is p...

Objective This study aimed to assess the magnitude of malaria and its associated risk factors in urban, Batu town, Oromia Regional State, Ethiopia. Methods This health-facility based prospective cross-sectional study enrolled 356 febrile malaria patients to assess risk factors associated with malaria infection. Results An overall positivity rate...

Background: Cystic echinococcosis is a zoonotic disease caused by the metacestode stage of Echinococcus granulosus and occurs worldwide, causing considerable economic losses and public health problems. The currently available methods for the diagnosis of animal hydatidosis are time-consuming and require well-equipped laboratories which make them i...

Background One of the major challenges in developing an effective vaccine against asexual stages of Plasmodium falciparum is genetic polymorphism within parasite population. Understanding the genetic polymorphism like block 2 region of merozoite surface protein-1 ( msp-1 ) gene of P. falciparum enlighten mechanisms underlining disease pathology, id...

In conventional systems, indicator organisms are used to monitor drinking water quality which is unspecific in detecting pathogens. On the contrary, molecular techniques play vital role in these aspects by providing precise genetic information about particular pathogen of interest via proper biomarkers. The aim of this study was to undertake geneti...

Background: Despite significant progress achieved globally in reducing malaria burden, still it is one of the major public health problems in Ethiopia. Furthermore, better understanding of genetic polymorphism of P. falciparum: the most virulent and predominant malaria parasite primarily targeted in malaria control and elimination program is paramo...

Newcastle disease (ND) is a major infectious disease of poultry caused by a virulent strain of Avian Paramyxovirus type-1 (APMV-1). It is a major threat to the poultry industry in many countries of the world including Ethiopia. The aim of this study was to conduct molecular surveillance of ND Virus and identify potential risk factors for nonvaccina...

Background: One of the major challenges in developing an effective vaccine against asexual stages of Plasmodium falciparum is genetic polymorphism within parasite population. Understanding the genetic polymorphism like block 2 region of merozoite surface protein (msp-1) genes of P. falciparum enlighten mechanisms underlining disease pathology, iden...

Newcastle disease (ND) is a major infectious disease of poultry caused by a virulent strain of Avian Paramyxovirus type–1 (APMV-1). It is a major threat to the poultry industry in many countries of the world including Ethiopia. The aim of this study was to conduct molecular surveillance of Newcastle Disease Virus (NDV) and identify potential risk f...

The distribution of malaria shows considerable spatial heterogeneity globally, regionally and locally. For the design of effective malaria control and elimination, and for its implementation in Ethiopia, urban malaria should be given due attention. Therefore, the present study was aimed to examine the status of urban malaria during the minor transm...

Background- Malaria is one of the leading causes of morbidity and mortality particularly in sub-Saharan Africa including Ethiopia. Approximately, 68% of its population is at a risk of malaria infection and nearly three-fourth of the Ethiopia landmass is considered as malarious. Most of the malaria related researches are being conducted in the rural...

Background- Malaria is one of the leading causes of morbidity and mortality particularly in sub-Saharan Africa including Ethiopia. Approximately, 68% of its population is at a risk of malaria infection and nearly three-fourth of the Ethiopia landmass is considered as malarious. Most of the malaria related researches are being conducted in the rural...

SARS-CoV-2 is a new virus responsible for an outbreak of respiratory illness known as COVID-19, which has spread to several countries around the world and a global effort is being undertaken to characterize the molecular features and evolutionary origins of this virus. In silico analysis of the transcription start sites, promoter regions, transcrip...

Malaria is a major health problem in the world particularly in sub-Saharan Africa where 90% of malaria deaths occur. Likewise malaria is one of the leading causes of morbidity and mortality in Ethiopia. It has been reported that about 75% of the country is malarious where 60% of its population is at risk of this infection. Like many African countri...

Background Newcastle disease (ND) is a major infectious disease of poultry caused by a virulent strain of Avian Paramyxovirus – 1. It is a major threat to the poultry industry in many countries of the world including Ethiopia. Newcastle Disease Virus (NDV) is an enveloped, non-segmented, single-stranded negative-sense RNA virus with a helical morph...

Identifications of transcription start sites (TSSs) and promoter regions are first step to understand the regulation mechanisms of gene expression and association with genetic variations in the regions. This analysis was conducted with the objectives to identify TSSs, determine the promoter regions, identify common candidate motifs and transcriptio...

Background Malaria is more often considered a problem of the rural poor and the disease has been overlooked in urban settings for centuries due to the assumption that economic development in urban areas results in better life conditions, such as improved housing, drainage system and environmental changes that makes urban areas not conducive for bre...

Promoters are, generally, located immediately upstream of a transcription start site (TSS) and have a variety of regulatory motifs, such as transcription factors (TFs) and CpG islands (CGIs), that participate in the regulation of gene expression. Here analysis of the promoter region for pig vomeronasal receptor type 1 (V1R) was described. In the an...

Promoters are, generally, located immediately upstream of a transcription start site (TSS) and have a variety of regulatory motifs, such as transcription factors (TFs) and CpG islands (CGIs), that participate in the regulation of gene expression. Here analysis of the promoter region for pig vomeronasal receptor type 1 (V1R) was described. In the an...

The genetic structure and function of MHC class I chain-related (MIC) genes in the pig genome have not been well characterized, and show discordance in available data. Therefore, we have experimentally characterized the exon-intron structure and functional copy expression pattern of the pig MIC gene, SLA-MIC2. We have also studied the genetic diver...

We performed a case-control study to evaluate the polymorphisms of two porcine MHC class II genes, SLA-DQB1 and DRB1 on the post-weaning survivability of piglets. We randomly collected tissues from 388 F1 animals from Landrace-Yorkshire crosses comprised of 201 piglets with symptoms comparable to wasting diseases or disease like phenotypes includin...

Olfactory receptor (OR) genes belong to the largest gene family in the mammalian genome and S. scrofa contains 1300 OR related sequences. We investigated the genetic diversity of porcine OR genes focusing on 22 representative pig OR genes which covers most of OR gene containing chromosomes and all the OR gene families classified in the pigs. We spe...

Reproductive disorders are one of the most important problems that affect the production and productivity of dairy cows. A cross sectional study was conducted to determine the prevalence of major reproductive disorders of dairy cows in and around Asella town, Central Ethiopia. For this purpose, a total of 82 owners and/or attendants of dairy cow he...

A study was carried out to assess the reproductive performance of crossbred dairy cows under smallholder conditions in Asella town, Oromia regional state, Ethiopia. A total of sixty crossbred dairy cow farmers that owned 3 to 5 cows were interviewed using a structured questionnaire to collect information on age at first service, age at first calvin...

A study to determine the prevalence of bovine tuberculosis (TB) was conducted on 625 animals (140 local Arsi cattle breeds and 485 of their crosses with pure Holstein Friesians) randomly selected from four districts of Arsi Zone and West Arsi Zone, Oromia, Ethiopia, using comparative intradermal tuberculin (CIT) test. An overall individual animal p...

Village chickens are found in different agro-ecologies of Ethiopia but clear information is lacking regarding their socio-economic importance and production management in rift valley of Oromia, Ethiopia. Therefore, in this study a total of 88 households rearing village chickens in rift valley of Oromia, were surveyed to get base line information on...

Critical constraints for village poultry production in the study area were identified as: diseases and predators, lack of proper health care, poor feeding and poor marketing information. Replacement of indigenous chickens by exotic chicken breeds is also a major threat in eroding and dilution of the indigenous genetic resources. Newcastle Disease (...

A total of 1106 livestock sera from pastoral and agro-pastoral farming system were screened for antibodies for Brucella species using the Rose Bengal Plate Test. Brucella antibody was detected in all study districts and an overall herd seroprevalence of 11.2% were recorded from the study areas. Accordingly, in pastoral area the prevalence of brucel...

Two groups of Trypanosoma congolense isolates collected from cattle in 1996 (n=39) and 2003 (n=38) in the Eastern Province of Zambia were analyzed by BclI-PCR-RFLP to assess the evolution of diminazene aceturate (DA) resistance over a period of seven years. The results show a significant increase of DA resistance in this relatively short period of...

The study was conducted on thirty six male Arsi-Bale kids of 10.56 ± 0.39 kg initial body weight for 15 months to investigate the effects of age at castration on growth performance and carcass characteristics. The treatments were entire/intact (T1), castration at three (T2), at six (T3) and at nine months of age (T4). All castrated and entire goats...

A study was conducted in two valleys of the southwest Ethiopia (Didessa and Ghibe valleys) from November 2002 to April 2003 to collect baseline data on the prevalence of trypanosomosis in local breeds of sheep and goats. Blood samples from 533 randomly selected small ruminants of different species, sex and age groups were collected and examined wit...