Experiments were conducted to determine the effects of feeding different starch sources on piglets. Four diets were formulated with maize, brown rice, sticky rice and Hi-Maize 1043 as starch sources, with resistant starch (RS) contents of 2.3%, 0.9%, 0.0%, 20.6%, and amylose and amylopectin ratio of 0.23%, 0.21%, 0.18%, 0.06% respectively. Fifty-six pigs weaned at 28 days of age were randomly assigned to one of the four diets. In Exp. 1, six piglets in each group were fitted with an indwelling jugular catheter. After 25 days of feeding trial, venous blood samples were obtained at time zero and every 1 h for 4 h. In Exp. 2, the remaining piglets were used to determine the effects of different starch sources on the fractional synthesis rate (FSR). The results indicated that feeding the Hi-Maize 1043 diet decreased (p < 0.05) plasma contents of glucose, insulin, lactic acid and T(3), while sticky rice increased plasma contents of glucose and insulin. The insulin contents in piglets fed the sticky rice diet was 69.2 microIU/ml at 1 h post-feeding which was highest among the starch diets. The FSR in the pancreas, spleen, duodenum, jejunum, ileum and colon in the corn group were much higher (p < 0.05) than that in the sticky rice group. These results suggest that RS is potentially beneficial for improving insulin sensitivity in young pigs and that the ratio of amylose and amylopectin have significantly effects on the FSR in splanchnic tissues in weaned piglets. Another finding of this study indicated maize with a ratio of amylose and amylopectin of 0.23 has the best starch sources for pig production.

At present，transcription analysis of gene expression commonly uses housekeeping genes as control for normalization．In this study, the expression levels of three housekeeping genes including GAPDH, β-actin, and 18S rRNA in six tissues and five developmental stages of the Mandarin fish Siniperca chuatsi were assayed with quantitative real-time PCR (qPCR)．Differences in expression levels were analyzed using geNorm program. The results demonstrate that β-actin is the most stable gene at developmental stages and GAPDH is the most stable in different tissues. While 18S rRNA expression during development is differentially regulated, which indicates it is suitable as an internal control for gene expression normalization at the developmental level. Overall, the data suggest that the two most stable housekeeping genes are enough to accurately calibrate gene expression in S. chuatsi. The significance of this study provided convincing references and methodology for housekeeping gene selection and normalization in gene expression analysis with regular PCR or qPCR.

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The extant freshwater sinipercids represent a group of 12 species and they are endemic to East Asia. In this study, we cloned and sequenced the complete mitochondrial DNA of Siniperca obscura from the Lijiang River. The size of the complete mitochondrial genome is 16,492 bp. The organization of the mitochondrial contained 37 genes (13 protein-coding genes, 2 ribosomal RNA and 22 transfer RNAs) and a major non-coding control region as well as those reported sinipercid fishes. Among the 13 protein-coding genes, three reading-frame overlaps were found: ATP8 and ATP6 overlap by 10 nucleotides and ND4 and ND4L overlap by 7 nucleotides and ND5 and ND6 overlap by 5 nucleotides. Phylogenetic analyses using N-J and maximum parsimony (MP) computational algorithms showed that S. chuatsi and S. kneri are sister species, next joined by S. Obscura, based on combined 12 protein-coding genes (excluding DN6).