The genotypes of the melatonin receptor 1A (MTNR1A) were determined by PCR-RFLP in the native Iranian Shall  and karakul breeds of sheep . Blood samples were collected from 60 karakul and 50 Shall breeds. Genomic DNA was extracted based on the Guanidin Thiocyanate-slica gel method. After PCR reaction, PCR products were digested by the Mnl1 restriction enzyme. The MTNR1A locus had two genotypes ...

Italian Maremmana, Turkish Grey and Hungarian Grey breeds belong to the same Podolic group of cattle, have a similar conformation and recently experienced a similar demographic reduction. The aim of this study was to assess the relationship among the analysed Podolic breeds and to verify whether their genetic state reflects their history. To do so, approximately 100 single nucleotide polymorphi...

The Qira black sheep and the Hetian sheep are two local breeds in the Northwest of China, which are characterized by high-fecundity and low-fecundity breed respectively. The elucidation of mRNA expression profiles in the ovaries among different sheep breeds representing fecundity extremes will helpful for identification and utilization of major prolificacy genes in sheep. In the present study, ...

BACKGROUND The rates of congenital disorders in Swiss sheep were determined by a questionnaire which was sent to 3,183 members of the Swiss Sheep Breeders' Association. FINDINGS A total of 993 questionnaires were returned, giving a response rate of 31.2%. Of these, 862 questionnaires originated from farms keeping one of the predominant Swiss sheep breeds: Swiss White Alpine sheep, Brown-Heade...

In Europe, especially in Mediterranean areas, the sheep has been traditionally exploited as a dual purpose species, with income from both meat and milk. Modernization of husbandry methods and the establishment of breeding schemes focused on milk production have led to the development of "dairy breeds." This study investigated selective sweeps specifically related to dairy production in sheep by...

BACKGROUND It has been questioned if the old native Norwegian sheep breed, Old Norse Sheep (also called Norwegian Feral Sheep), normally distributed on coastal areas where ticks are abundant, is more protected against tick-borne infections than other Norwegian breeds due to a continuously high selection pressure on pasture. The aim of the present study was to test this hypothesis in an experime...

The importance and unique biological traits, as well as the growing financial value, of milk from small Greek ruminants is continuously attracting interest from both the scientific community and industry. In this regard the construction of a reference dataset of the milk of the Greek sheep breeds is of great interest. In order to obtain such a dataset we employed cutting-edge proteomics methodo...

Through their domestication and subsequent selection, sheep have been adapted to thrive in a diverse range of environments. To characterise the genetic consequence of both domestication and selection, we genotyped 49,034 SNP in 2,819 animals from a diverse collection of 74 sheep breeds. We find the majority of sheep populations contain high SNP diversity and have retained an effective populatio...