Sara Pegolo

University of Padova | UNIPD · Department of Agronomy, Food, Natural Resources, Animals and the Environment DAFNAE

Mastitis, especially the subclinical form, is the most common economic and health problem in dairy cows. Little is known about changes in milk fatty acid (FA) composition according to infection/inflammation status of the mammary gland. The aim of this study was to investigate the associations between naturally occurring subclinical intramammary inf...

The considerable increase in the production capacity of individual cows, due to both the selective breeding and innovations in the dairy sector, has posed challenges to management practices in terms of maintaining the nutritional and metabolic health statuses of dairy cows. This observational study aimed to investigate the associations between milk...

Udder health has a crucial role in sustainable milk production, and various reports have pointed out that changes in udder condition seem to affect milk mineral content. The somatic cell count (SCC) is the most recognized indicator for the determination of udder health status. Recently, a new parameter, the differential somatic cell count (DSCC), h...

The aim of this study was to investigate the associations between subclinical intramammary infection (IMI) from different pathogens combined with inflammation status and a set of blood biochemical traits including energy-related metabolites, indicators of liver function or hepatic damage, oxidative stress, inflammation, innate immunity, and mineral...

The causes of variation in the milk mineral profile of dairy cattle during the first phase of lactation were studied under the hypothesis that the milk mineral profile partially reflects the animals' metabolic status. Correlations between the minerals and the main milk constituents (i.e., protein, fat, and lactose percentages), and their associatio...

Background Subclinical intramammary infection (IMI) represents a significant problem in maintaining dairy cows’ health. Disease severity and extent depend on the interaction between the causative agent, environment, and host. To investigate the molecular mechanisms behind the host immune response, we used RNA-Seq for the milk somatic cells (SC) tra...

The adoption of preventive management decisions is crucial to dealing with metabolic impairments in dairy cattle. Various serum metabolites are known to be useful indicators of the health status of cows. In this study, we used milk Fourier-transform mid-infrared (FTIR) spectra and various machine learning (ML) algorithms to develop prediction equat...

Background Blood metabolic profiles can be used to assess metabolic disorders and to evaluate the health status of dairy cows. Given that these analyses are time-consuming, expensive, and stressful for the cows, there has been increased interest in Fourier transform infrared (FTIR) spectroscopy of milk samples as a rapid, cost-effective alternative...

In recent years, increasing attention has been fo-cused on the genetic evaluation of protein fractions in cow milk with the aim of improving milk quality and technological characteristics. In this context, advances in high-throughput phenotyping by Fourier-transform infrared (FTIR) spectroscopy offer the opportunity for large-scale, efficient measu...

Background: Mild equine asthma (MEA) and severe equine asthma (SEA) are two of the most frequent equine airway inflammatory diseases, but knowledge about their pathogenesis is limited. The goal of this study was to investigate gene expression differences in the respiratory tract of MEA- and SEA-affected horses and their relationship with clinical...

La zootecnia di precisione, definita anche dall’acronimo inglese PLF (Precision Livestock Farming), rappresenta negli ultimi anni un settore in forte espansione negli allevamenti di bovine da latte. L’obiettivo principale è quello di sfruttare tecnologie innovative per la misurazione di indicatori di salute e produttività dei singoli soggetti al fi...

Udder health in dairy herds is a very important issue given its implications for animal welfare and the production of high-quality milk. Somatic cell count (SCC) is the most widely used means of assessing udder health status. However, differential somatic cell count (DSCC) has recently been proposed as a new and more effective means of evaluating i...

DOSSIER / CONTRO LE MASTITI. L'aumento delle cellule somatiche e la presenza di infezione intramammaria sono due situazioni associate a un peggioramento delle caratteristiche tecnologiche del latte, a variazioni negli indicatori di salute della mammella, a una riduzione della sintesi degli acidi grassi nella ghiandola mammaria L e infezioni intrama...

Ultrasound (US) imaging has been proposed as a noninvasive tool for monitoring liver dysfunction in dairy cows. This study, carried out on 306 clinically healthy Holstein cows in the first 120 d of lactation kept in 2 herds in northern Italy, aimed at investigating the association between US imaging-derived traits, namely predicted liver triacylgly...

In this study, we investigated the association between natural subclinical intramammary infection (IMI) caused by Streptococcus agalactiae and Prototheca spp. and milk differential cell counts assessed by cytofluorimetric analysis in Holstein cows. After an initial bacteriological screening on 188 animals and a second assessment carried out 2 wk la...

Precision livestock farming technologies are used to monitor animal health and welfare parameters continuously and in real time in order to optimize nutrition and productivity and to detect health issues at an early stage. The possibility of predicting blood metabolites from milk samples obtained during routine milking by means of infrared spectros...

Dairy cows have high incidences of metabolic disturbances, which often lead to disease, having a subsequent significant impact on productivity and reproductive performance. As the milk fatty acid (FA) profile represents a fingerprint of the cow’s nutritional and metabolic status, it could be a suitable indicator of metabolic status at the cow level...

Milk proteins genetic variants have always attracted a lot of interest as they are associated with important issues relating to milk composition and technological properties. An important debate has recently opened at an international level on the role of β-casein (β-CN) A1 and A2 polymorphisms, toward human health. For this reason, a lot of effort...

Cheese-making traits in dairy cattle are important to the dairy industry but are difficult to measure at the individual level because there are limitations on collecting phenotypic information. Mid-infrared spectroscopy has its advantages, but it can only be used during monthly milk recordings. Recently, in-line devices for real-time analysis of mi...

In this study, we investigated associations among subclinical intra-mammary infection (IMI) and quarter-level milk composition, udder health indicators, and cheesemaking traits. The dataset included records from 450 Holstein cows belonging to three dairy herds. After an initial screening (T0) to identify animals infected by Streptococcus agalactiae...

Knowledge of the genetic architecture of key growth and beef traits in livestock species has greatly improved worldwide thanks to genome-wide association studies (GWAS), which allow to link target phenotypes to Single Nucleotide Polymorphisms (SNPs) across the genome. Local dual-purpose breeds have rarely been the focus of such studies; recently, h...

Metabolic disorders, including hepatic lipidosis and ketosis, severely affect animal health status and welfare with a large economic burden in dairy herds. The gold standard for diagnosing hepatic lipidosis is the liver biopsy, which is impractical and invasive for the screening at farm level. Ultrasound (US) imaging is a promising technique for id...

Metabolic disorders, including hepatic lipidosis and ketosis, severely affect animal health status and welfare with a large economic burden in dairy herds. The gold standard for diagnosing hepatic lipidosis is the liver biopsy, which is impractical and invasive for the screening at farm level. Ultrasound (US) imaging is a promising technique for id...

Mastitis is one of the most prevalent diseases in dairy cattle and is the cause of considerable economic losses. Alongside somatic cell count (SCC), differential somat-ic cell count (DSCC) has been recently introduced as a new indicator of intramammary infection. The DSCC is expressed as a count or a proportion (%) of polymor-phonuclear neutrophils...

Spectroscopic predictions can be used for the genetic improvement of meat quality traits in cattle. No information is however available on the genetics of meat absorbance spectra. This research investigated the phenotypic variation and the heritability of meat absorbance spectra at individual wavelengths in the ultraviolet–visible and near-infrared...

In general, Fourier-transform infrared (FTIR) predictions are developed using a single-breed population split into a training and a validation set. However, using populations formed of dif-ferent breeds is an attractive way to design cross-validation scenarios aimed at increasing pre-diction for difficult-to-measure traits in the dairy industry. Th...

Our study investigated the inbreeding load for fertility traits in the Italian Brown Swiss dairy cattle breed. Fertility traits included continuous traits (i.e., interval from calving to first service, days open, and calving interval) and categorical traits (i.e., calving rate at first insemination and nonreturn date at d 56). We included only reco...

Fourier-transform infrared (FTIR) spectroscopy is a powerful high-throughput phenotyping tool for predicting traits that are expensive and difficult to measure in dairy cattle. Calibration equations are often developed using standard methods, such as partial least squares (PLS) regression. Methods that employ penalization, rank-reduction, and varia...

This study aimed to investigate the genetic and pu-tative causal relationships between fertility traits [i.e., days open (DO) and calving rate (CR)] and milk quality , composition, and fatty acid contents (milk composition traits) in Holstein-Friesian, Brown Swiss, and Sim-mental cattle, using recursive models within a Bayesian framework. Trivariat...

Background: Over the past decade, Fourier transform infrared (FTIR) spectroscopy has been used to predict novel milk protein phenotypes. Genomic data might help predict these phenotypes when integrated with milk FTIR spectra. The objective of this study was to investigate prediction accuracy for milk protein phenotypes when heterogeneous on-farm,...

The aims of this study were to investigate potential functional relationships among milk protein fractions in dairy cattle and to carry out a structural equation model (SEM) GWAS to provide a decomposition of total SNP effects into direct effects and effects mediated by traits that are upstream in a phenotypic network. To achieve these aims, we fir...

The aim of this study was to investigate the associations between differential somatic cell count (DSCC) and milk quality and udder health traits, and for the first time, between DSCC and milk coagulation properties and cheesemaking traits in a population of 1,264 Holstein cows reared in northern Italy. Differential somatic cell count represents th...

Genomic selection (GS) reports on milk fatty acid (FA) profiles have been published quite recently and are still few despite this trait represents the most important aspect of milk nutritional and sensory quality. Reasons for this can be found in the high costs of phenotype recording but also in issues related to its nature of complex trait constit...

There is an ever-growing interest in research oriented towards the improvement of quality of animal products. In this context, one major operational bottleneck is the possibility to collect quality indicators over the meat and dairy chains and for selective breeding purposes. The use of near-infrared (NIR) and the Fourier-transformed infrared (FTIR...

Different fractions of milk nitrogenous compounds (not only caseins) have different effects on the nutritional value of milk, its coagulation and curd firming properties, and its cheese-making efficiency. To assess different sources of variation, especially the cows' breed and genetic variants of the main protein fractions, milk samples were collec...

In this study, we aimed to investigate differences in the genetics of fertility traits (heritability of traits and correlations between traits in divergent environments) in dairy cows of different production levels defined on the basis of the herd-average daily milk energy output (herd-dMEO). Data were obtained from Holstein-Friesian (n = 37,359 fo...

The objective of this study was to evaluate the contribution of Fourier-transformed infrared spectroscopy (FTIR) data for dairy cattle breeding through two different approaches: (i) estimating the genetic parameters for 30 measured milk traits and their FTIR predictions and investigating the additive genetic correlation between them and (ii) evalua...

There is an ever-growing interest in research oriented towards the improvement of quality of animal products. In this context, one major operational bottleneck is the possibility to collect quality indicators over the meat and dairy chains and for selective breeding purposes. The use of near-infrared (NIR) and the Fourier-transformed infrared (FTIR...

Mastitis is one of the most prevalent and costly diseases in dairy cattle. It results in changes in milk composition and quality which are indicators of udder inflammation in absence of clinical signs. We applied structural equation modeling (SEM) - GWAS aiming to explore interrelated dependency relationships among phenotypes related to udder healt...

Depending on whether milk protein fractions are evaluated qualitatively or quantitatively, different genetic outcomes may emerge. In this study, we compared the genetic parameters for the major milk protein fractions—caseins (αS1-, αS2-, β-, and к-CN), and whey proteins (β-lactoglobulin, β-LG; α-lactalbumin, α-LA)—estimated using the multi-trait ge...

A key concern in beef production is how to improve carcass and meat quality traits. Identifying the genomic regions and biological pathways that contribute to explaining variability in these traits is of great importance for selection purposes. In this study, genome wide-association ( GWAS ) and pathway-based analyses of carcass traits (age at slau...

SRA repository accession numbers for RNA-seq data employed in the study. (XLSX)

List of significantly associated SNVs from case-control association. S3 Table contains two worksheets organized as follow: S3.1 Significantly associated SNVs on BCL versus controls; S3.2 Significantly associated SNVs on DLBCL versus controls. Columns A-C: Dog variant ID and its position on CanFam3.1 genome. Column D: Minor allele. Column E: Major a...

Median TTP and LSS for clusters obtained by unsupervised clustering using all (1, 2) and only significant (3, 4) novel SNVs from DLBCL. Dogs treated with chemotherapy-only and chemotherapy and immunotherapy were tested separately. (XLSX)

Clinical data of dogs included in the study. (XLSX)

Significantly enriched pathways and gene ontology (GO) terms identified by ClueGO on DLBCL significantly associated genes (SAGs). Columns A, B: GO/KEGG terms ID and description. Column C, D: Number and percentage of overlapping genes. Column E: BH-adjusted (FDR) p-value. Column F: List of SAGs belonging to each GO/KEGG term. (XLSX)

Significantly enriched pathways and gene ontology (GO) terms in common between significantly associated genes (SAGs) and differentially expressed genes (DEGs) identified by ClueGO on DLBCL. Columns A, B: GO/KEGG terms ID and description. Column C, D: Number and percentage of genes in pathways that are either significantly mutated or differentially...

The Venice Lagoon is an interesting example of an ecosystem suffering for a considerable anthropogenic impact, resulting in high concentrations of persistent organic pollutants (POPs) in lagoon sediments and seafood. In this context, biomonitoring is a crucially important task. The present study aimed at evaluating the validity of a multiple biomar...

We investigated the influence of rumen‐protected conjugated linoleic acid (rpCLA) on growth performances, and carcass and meat quality traits in beef. Twenty‐four young bulls and 30 heifers obtained from double‐muscled beef sires and dairy cows were fed a low‐protein ration (110 g/kg DM of crude protein) supplemented with 0, 8 or 80 g/d of a commer...

The genomic landscape in human B-cell lymphomas has revealed several somatic mutations and potentially relevant germline alterations affecting therapy and prognosis. Also, mutations originally described as somatic aberrations have been shown to confer cancer predisposition when occurring in the germline. The relevance of mutations in canine B-cell...

The aim of this study was to perform genetic, genome-wide association (GWAS), and gene-set enrichment analyses with latent variables related to milk fatty acid profile (i.e., fatty acids factor scores; FAF), milk composition , and udder health in a cohort of 1,158 Italian Brown Swiss cows. The phenotypes under study were 12 FAF previously identifie...

Canine malignant melanoma is a highly aggressive tumor with a low survival rate and represents an ideal spontaneous model for the human counterpart. Considerable progress has been recently obtained, but the therapeutic success for canine melanoma is still challenging. Little is known about the mechanisms beyond pathogenesis and melanoma development...

Abstract Volatile organic compounds (VOCs) are small molecules that contribute to the distinctive flavour of cheese which is an important attribute for consumer acceptability. To investigate whether cow’s genetic background might contribute to cheese volatilome, we carried out genome-wide association studies (GWAS) and pathway–based analyses for 17...

The aim of this study was to investigate in Holstein cows the genetic basis of blood serum metabolites [i.e., total protein, albumin, globulin, albumin: globulin ratio (A:G), and blood β-hydroxybutyrate (BHB)], a set of milk phenotypes related to udder health, milk quality technological characteristics, and genetic relationships among them. Samples...

Little is known about the influence of dietary crude protein (CP) restriction and rumen-protected conjugated linoleic acid (rpCLA) supply on digestibility and metabolism of nutrients in dairy cows. This study investigated the effect of low dietary CP level combined with rpCLA supply on FA secretion into milk and excretion via feces in dairy cows. T...

In this study we carried out genome-wide association studies (GWAS) for milk nitrogen fractions in a cohort of 1,011 Brown Swiss cows. We uncovered 170 significant single nucleotide polymorphism (SNPs), mostly located on BTA6 and BTA11. The network-based Associated Weight Matrix (AWM) approach was used to exploit the results from GWAS and, in combi...

Among reared bivalves, some “novel species” such as the great scallop, Pecten maximus, have experienced more difficulty with routine reproduction due to their high sensitivity to biological, chemical, and physical stress during stages of early development. Working with high larval densities requires the use of aeration systems to provide optimal la...

The quantities and proportions of protein fractions have notable effects on the nutritional and technological value of milk. Although much is known about the effects of genetic variants on milk proteins, the complex relationships among the set of genes and pathways regulating the different protein fractions synthesis and secretion into milk in dair...