Low levels of taurine introgression in the current Brazilian Nelore and Gir indicine cattle populations

Background: Nelore and Gir are the two most important indicine cattle breeds for production of beef and milk in Brazil. Historical records state that these breeds were introduced in Brazil from the Indian subcontinent, crossed to local taurine cattle in order to quickly increase the population size, and then backcrossed to the original breeds to recover indicine adaptive and productive traits. Previous investigations based on sparse DNA markers detected taurine admixture in these breeds. High-density genome-wide analyses can provide high-resolution information on the genetic composition of current Nelore and Gir populations, estimate more precisely the levels and nature of taurine introgression, and shed light on their history and the strategies that were used to expand these breeds. Results: We used the high-density Illumina BovineHD BeadChip with more than 777 K single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) that were reduced to 697 115 after quality control filtering to investigate the structure of Nelore and Gir populations and seven other worldwide populations for comparison. Multidimensional scaling and model-based ancestry estimation clearly separated the indicine, European taurine and African taurine ancestries. The average level of taurine introgression in the autosomal genome of Nelore and Gir breeds was less than 1% but was 9% for the Brahman breed. Analyses based on the mitochondrial SNPs present in the Illumina BovineHD BeadChip did not clearly differentiate taurine and indicine haplotype groupings. Conclusions: The low level of taurine ancestry observed for both Nelore and Gir breeds confirms the historical records of crossbreeding and supports a strong directional selection against taurine haplotypes via backcrossing. Random sampling in production herds across the country and subsequent genotyping would be useful for a more complete view of the admixture levels in the commercial Nelore and Gir populations.(VLID)90707

Genome changes due to artificial selection in U.S. Holstein cattle

Abstract Background The availability of a unique unselected Holstein line since 1964 provided a direct comparison between selected and unselected Holstein genomes whereas large Holstein samples provided unprecedented statistical power for identifying high-confidence SNP effects. Utilizing these unique resources, we aimed to identify genome changes affected by selection since 1964. Results Direct comparison of genome-wide SNP markers between a Holstein line unselected since 1964 and contemporary Holsteins showed that the 40 years of artificial selection since 1964 resulted in genome landscape changes. Among the regions affected by selection, the regions containing 198 genes with fertility functions had a larger negative correlation than that of all SNPs between the SNP effects on milk yield and daughter pregnancy rate. These results supported the hypothesis that hitchhiking of genetic selection for milk production by negative effects of fertility genes contributed to the unintended declines in fertility since 1964. The genome regions subjected to selection also contained 67 immunity genes, the bovine MHC region of Chr23 with significantly decreased heterozygosity in contemporary Holsteins, and large gene clusters including T-cell receptor and immunoglobulin genes. Conclusions This study for the first time provided direct evidence that genetic selection for milk production affected fertility and immunity genes and that the hitchhiking of genetic selection for milk production by negative fertility effects contributed to the fertility declines since 1964, and identified a large number of candidate fertility and immunity genes affected by selection. The results provided novel understanding about genome changes due to artificial selection and their impact on fertility and immunity genes and could facilitate developing genetic methods to reverse the declines in fertility and immunity in Holstein cattle