Download PDF Version
Champaign, IL (May 19, 2021)—The American Dairy Science Association® (ADSA®) is pleased to announce Eliab Estrada-Cortés as the 2021 recipient of the Alltech Inc. Graduate Student Paper Publication Award. Estrada-Cortés will be recognized during the virtual ADSA Annual Meeting.
The Alltech Inc. Graduate Student Paper Publication Award recognizes a graduate student, who is also a member of ADSA, who has published a paper in the Journal of Dairy Science® (JDS®). The manuscript must be based on research conducted by the student before his or her final oral examination and must list the student as senior author. The manuscript must be submitted to JDS within six months after completion of the final oral examination and then be accepted to and/or published in JDS during the calendar year preceding the award.
As a doctoral student, Estrada-Cortés engaged in discussions with Marcos Zenobi, a fellow graduate student at the University of Florida who had observed in his research fertility benefits of feeding rumen-protected choline to transition cows. Estrada-Cortés asked himself whether choline might be exerting effects on fertility by acting directly on the preimplantation embryo. To test this hypothesis, he developed skills in production of bovine embryos in vitro and used that model to conduct a series of four experiments to assess changes in function of the preimplantation embryo caused by supplementation with choline. He identified concentration-dependent actions of choline on competence of the embryo to develop to the blastocyst stage, expression of specific genes important for embryonic development, and DNA methylation. Results from his paper clearly show that choline has a biological role in the preimplantation embryo that might have positive consequences.
It is with great pleasure that ADSA and the Alltech Biotechnology Center present Eliab Estrada-Cortés with the 2021 Alltech Inc. Graduate Student Paper Publication Award.
About the American Dairy Science Association (ADSA)
The American Dairy Science Association (ADSA) is an international organization of educators, scientists, and industry representatives who are committed to advancing the dairy industry and keenly aware of the vital role the dairy sciences play in fulfilling the economic, nutritive, and health requirements of the world’s population. It provides leadership in scientific and technical support to sustain and grow the global dairy industry through generation, dissemination, and exchange of information and services. Together, ADSA members have discovered new methods and technologies that have revolutionized the dairy industry.