Microsatellite diversity of the Nordic type of goats in relation to breed conservation: how relevant is pure ancestry?

In the last decades, several endangered breeds of livestock species have been re-established effectively. However, the successful revival of the Dutch and Danish Landrace goats involved crossing with exotic breeds and the ancestry of the current populations is therefore not clear. We have generated genotypes for 27 FAO-recommended microsatellites of these landraces and three phenotypically similar Nordic-type landraces and compared these breeds with central European, Mediterranean and south-west Asian goats. We found decreasing levels of genetic diversity with increasing distance from the south-west Asian domestication site with a south-east-to-north-west cline that is clearly steeper than the Mediterranean east-to-west cline. In terms of genetic diversity, the Dutch Landrace comes next to the isolated Icelandic breed, which has an extremely low diversity. The Norwegian coastal goat and the Finnish and Icelandic landraces are clearly related. It appears that by a combination of mixed origin and a population bottleneck, the Dutch and Danish Land-races are separated from the other breeds. However, the current Dutch and Danish populations with the multicoloured and long-horned appearance effectively substitute for the original breed, illustrating that for conservation of cultural heritage, the phenotype of a breed is more relevant than pure ancestry and the genetic diversity of the original breed. More in general, we propose that for conservation, the retention of genetic diversity of an original breed and of the visual phenotype by which the breed is recognized and defined needs to be considered separately

Antimicrobial potential of probiotic or potentially probiotic lactic acid bacteria, the first results of the international European research project PROPATH of the PROEUHEALTH cluster

The EU-funded PROPATH project addresses the important health issue of prevention of gastrointestinal disorders through probiotics and prebiotics. Seven European laboratories are co-operating in this project, which aims to isolate and characterize the relevant antimicrobial agents to combat Gram-negative bacteria including Helicobacter pylori and Salmonella enterica serovar Typhimurium. In this paper, the first results on the screening for probiotic or potentially probiotic lactobacilli that exhibit antimicrobial activity towards these Gram-negative pathogenic bacteria are presented. Spot-on-lawn assays, well-diffusion assays and time-kill studies were performed among the lactic acid bacteria strains that were either collected from fermented foods and faeces (breast-fed babies, infants and animals) or isolated from commercial products to investigate whether any of the collected strains were inhibiting growth of or were killing certain indicator bacteria. Strains inhibiting the gastrointestinal pathogens mentioned above were found. Evidence has been obtained that compounds different from organic acids are produced

Microsatellite diversity of the Nordic type of goats in relation to breed conservation : how relevant is pure ancestry?

In the last decades, several endangered breeds of livestock species have been re-established effectively. However, the successful revival of the Dutch and Danish Landrace goats involved crossing with exotic breeds and the ancestry of the current populations is therefore not clear. We have generated genotypes for 27 FAO-recommended microsatellites of these landraces and three phenotypically similar Nordic-type landraces and compared these breeds with central European, Mediterranean and south-west Asian goats. We found decreasing levels of genetic diversity with increasing distance from the south-west Asian domestication site with a south-east-to-north-west cline that is clearly steeper than the Mediterranean east-to-west cline. In terms of genetic diversity, the Dutch Landrace comes next to the isolated Icelandic breed, which has an extremely low diversity. The Norwegian coastal goat and the Finnish and Icelandic landraces are clearly related. It appears that by a combination of mixed origin and a population bottleneck, the Dutch and Danish Land-races are separated from the other breeds. However, the current Dutch and Danish populations with the multicoloured and long-horned appearance effectively substitute for the original breed, illustrating that for conservation of cultural heritage, the phenotype of a breed is more relevant than pure ancestry and the genetic diversity of the original breed. More in general, we propose that for conservation, the retention of genetic diversity of an original breed and of the visual phenotype by which the breed is recognized and defined needs to be considered separately