Background: With the increasing concern for health and nutrition, dietary fat has attracted considerable attention. The composition of fatty acids in the diet is important because they are associated with major diseases including cancers, diabetes, and cardiovascular disease. The fatty acid synthase (FASN) and stearoyl-CoA desaturase (delta-9-desaturase) (SCD) genes affect fatty acid compositio...

The Rasa Aragonesa sheep is the second most important Spanish breed after the Merino breed. Reported here is the prion protein (PrP) haplotype frequency distribution for scrapie-related codons (136, 154 and 171) and a sequencing study of the complete PrP gene open reading frame for this breed and six other closely related breeds. The study includes four scrapie-affected sheep flocks belonging t...

AIM The present study was thus undertaken to analyze the genetic diversity of Kilakarsal and Vembur sheep breeds using single-nucleotide polymorphism (SNP) markers within Toll-like receptor (TLR) 3, 5, 6, 9, and 10 genes. MATERIALS AND METHODS Competitive allele-specific polymerase chain reaction (PCR)-based end-point genotyping was performed using real-time PCR to type the SNPs. Allele discr...

Exposure to Mycobacterium avium subspecies paratuberculosis (MAP) does not always lead to Johne's disease. Understanding differences in disease susceptibility of individual animals is a key aspect to controlling mycobacterial diseases. This study was designed to examine the susceptibility or resistance of various breeds of sheep to MAP infection. Merino, Suffolk first cross Merino, Border Leice...

Broad diversity among breeds of sheep is a precious industry resource. This breed diversity can be managed to increase performance and profit through use of crossbred ewes mated to rams of a terminal sire breed. Differences among breeds in performance for survival, growth, carcass, wool, and reproductive traits are due to the unique genetic history associated with each breed. Beneficial genetic...

The domestication of livestock represented a crucial step in human history. By using endogenous retroviruses as genetic markers, we found that sheep differentiated on the basis of their "retrotype" and morphological traits dispersed across Eurasia and Africa via separate migratory episodes. Relicts of the first migrations include the Mouflon, as well as breeds previously recognized as "primitiv...

BACKGROUND Transmissible spongiform encephalopathies (TSE) are fatal neurodegenerative diseases of several mammalian species, including humans. In Italy, the active surveillance through rapid tests on brain stem from small ruminants started in 2002 on randomly selected samples of healthy slaughtered animals. Sampling number was proportionally related to the regional small ruminant population. O...

the archaeological evidence suggests that iran has been one of the first origins of sheep domestication in the world. this study aims to investigate the genetic diversity of indigenous iranian sheep breeds using mitochondrial dna (mtdna) and to explore the evolutionary history of sheep domestication in iran. single nucleotide polymorphism (snp) markers in the control region of mtdna were used t...

Highly adaptable and versatile populations of domestic sheep, the result of millennia of intense husbandry, are found in almost every corner of the world. Here we describe a genetic survey of sheep from the western fringe of its European distribution. We studied the mitochondrial DNA control region sequences from 161 individuals belonging to 7 Portuguese sheep breeds. Our study revealed a high ...

In West Africa, consumers pay a major attention on the coat colour of the sheep due to religious and cultural reasons. White coated individuals reach selling prices up to three-fold higher than black coated sheep. The aim of this study was to ascertain the genotypic and allelic frequencies of MC1R and ASIP genes in order to assess possible implementation of breeding programmes focusing on the i...