Characterization of HTATIP2 and its role during hair follicle cycles in Angora rabbit

Hair follicle (HF) growth and cycling is a complex biological process that occurs in most mammals. As HF growth and cycling directly impacts rabbit wool yield, it is important to better understand the potential regulation pattern of HF development. Our previous study demonstrated that HTATIP2 may participate in regulating rabbit HF cycles, but the molecular mechanism of HTATIP2 remained unclear. In this study, the coding sequence of the HTATIP2 gene in Angora rabbit was cloned. The length of the coding region sequence was 840 bp, which could code 279 amino acids, and exhibited high homology in different mammals. Bioinformatics analyses indicated that the HTATIP2 protein is stable, hydrophilic, located around the cytoplasm, and has a putative signal peptide. Moreover, we verified that HTATIP2 is highly expressed during catagen and telogen of the HF cycle. The overexpression vector was constructed and siRNAs were designed. Overexpression and knockdown of HTATIP2 appeared to regulate JAK-STAT pathway genes, such as BCL2, CCND1, c-Myc, and STAT2. It is therefore likely that HTATIP2 promotes cell apoptosis and inhibits cell proliferation. Our results indicate that HTATIP2 is highly expressed during catagen and telogen and may play an important role in JAK-STAT signaling. This study provides a theoretical foundation for investigating HTATIP2 in biological processes.

Performance of wool type angora rabbits under temperate conditions of Kashmir (J&K), INDIA

An attempt has been made to determine the production and quality performance of wool type Angora rabbits and screen out the best suitable breed under temperate conditions of Kashmir. A total of 202 records of French Angora and German Angora rabbit breeds maintained for 3 years (2009-2011) were evaluated to estimate the performance of quality and production traits in relation to genetic and non-genetic factors. For French Angora rabbits, the overall body weight gain (adult weight), annual wool yield (AWY), staple length (SL), medullation percentage (MP) and fiber diameter (FD) were found to be 2.506 ± 0.0432 kg, 303.575 ± 0.316 gms, 5.161 ± 0.0183 cms, 2.228 ± 0.0217 % and 12.289 ± 0.0178 µ, respectively. In case of German Angora rabbits, the values of 2.506 ± 0.033 kg, 605.96 ± 0.474 gms, 6.219 ± 0.0279 cms, 2.513 ± 0.0348 % and 12.347 ± 0.0265 µwere observed for the respective traits. The breed was found to reveal significant effect (P<0.01) on birth weight, weaning weight, annual weight, annual wool yield, staple length and medullation percentage and non-significant effect on fiber diameter. The sex was found to exhibit non-significant effect on all the traits under study. Based on present study, it can be concluded that German Angora breed of rabbit is most suitable for angora wool production and quality under temperate climatic conditions of Kashmir region.

Determination of the relationship between fiber characteristics and felting tendency of luxury fibers from various origins

When literature is reviewed in detail, it can be seen that there is limited research, especially on Angora rabbit fiber and again in none of the research was the felting propensity of luxury protein fibers from different origins (goat, camelid and rabbit) related with fiber properties, such as cuticle scale frequency and scale height. For this purpose, hair-based luxury fibers, which are most widely used and consumed all over the world (cashmere, mohair, angora, Huacaya alpaca and Suri alpaca) were chosen in order to measure fiber diameter, fiber length, cuticle scale frequency and scale height of these fibers. As a result, detailed relations about the felting propensity of the hair-based luxury fibers with the fiber properties were investigated. According to the experimental analysis, it was determined that angora, which is the finest and the shortest animal fiber, showed the lowest felting propensity. On the other hand, Suri alpaca fiber with a low scale height gave the highest feltability due to being the longest among the investigated fibers.