Massimo Bionaz

Ruminant nutrition is highly sophisticated. Immense research and application efforts have culminated in great successes. Today, we can satisfy with a relative high precision the nutritional needs of high producing dairy cows. Highly efficient genetic selection and improvement in overall management has resulted in a national average of ca. 10,000 kg of milk per year in USA. The 2012 USDA annual rep ...

Introduction The liver performs essential functions in mammals. These include, but are not limited to, gluconeogenesis and glycogen synthesis, synthesis of several plasma proteins encompassing clotting factors and acute phase proteins (APP) (e.g., haptoglobin, albumin, and fibrinogen), metabolism of amino acids and lipids, and detoxification including ammonia removal [1,2]. During the period aroun ...

IntroductionThe transcriptome is the momentary sum of all DNA transcribed in a cell. Classically, the transcriptome included the measurement of each of the ribosomal RNA, messenger RNA (mRNA), and transfer RNA. These include a relatively small portion of the whole genome.1 The rest of the DNA was considered, until recently, not to be transcribed.1 The accumulation of data in the last decade or so ...

IntroductionDuring early lactation (i.e. the first 60 days of lactation), the massive repartition of nutrients to the mammary gland for milk synthesis has been identified as a major contributor to the high risk of developing diseases [1]. This repartition of energy toward the mammary gland is not compensated via feed intake, that is also reaching a nadir during early lactation [1]. The requirement ...