Information about genetic diversity and population structure among cattle breeds is essential for genetic improvement, understanding of environmental adaptation as well as utilization and conservation of cattle breeds. This study investigated genetic diversity and the population structure among six cattle breeds in South African (SA) including Afrikaner (n = 44), Nguni (n = 54), Drakensberger (...

The Neolithic introduction of domestic cattle into Europe was followed by differential adaptation, selection, migration and genetic isolation, leading ultimately to the emergence of specialized breeds. We have studied the differentiation of European cattle by amplified fragment length polymorphism (AFLP) fingerprinting. Combining AFLP data sets from two laboratories yielded 81 biallelic polymor...

Previous archeological and genetic research has shown that modern cattle breeds are descended from multiple independent domestication events of the wild aurochs (Bos primigenius) ∼10,000 y ago. Two primary areas of domestication in the Middle East/Europe and the Indian subcontinent resulted in taurine and indicine lines of cattle, respectively. American descendants of cattle brought by European...

CSN1S1is one of the major genes encoding milk proteins of mammals. In this study we determined allele frequencies of CSN1S1-5` flanking region as well as exon 17 variants and their effects on milk traits in three indigenous cattle breeds Mazandarani, Golpaygani (Bos indicus) and Sarabi (Bos taurus) and Holstein cattle in Iran. CSN1S1*B variant was nearly fixed in Holstein but ranged from 0.40 t...

The study was carried out on eight Bos indicus cattle breeds namely, Sahiwal, Tharparkar, Nimari, Khilari, Deoni, Amritmahal, Hariana and Hilly cattle; two Bos taurus cattle breeds namely, Jersey and Holstein Friesian and Indicine×Taurine crossbred cattle to find out the polymorphic pattern of beta-lactoglobulin gene. The polymorphism at beta-lactoglobulin gene was detected by conducting PCR-RF...

BACKGROUND Over the past 15 years, 300 out of 6000 breeds of all farm animal species identified by the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) have gone extinct. Among cattle, many Podolian breeds are seriously endangered in various European areas. Podolian cattle include a group of very ancient European breeds, phenotypically close to the aurochs ancestors (Bos primigeniu...

Uniquely selected breeds bred over thousands of years of domestication in a wide range of environments have been declared extinct over the last century. Still more breeds are at risk of becoming extinct and the rate continues to accelerate. Assessing the current status and possible future dynamics of livestock breeds is therefore a critical step in the management of Animal Genetic Resources (An...

BACKGROUND Knowledge of linkage disequilibrium (LD) levels among different populations can be used to detect genetic diversity and to investigate the historical changes in population sizes. Availability of large numbers of SNP through new sequencing technologies has provided opportunities for extensive researches in quantifying LD patterns in cattle breeds. The aim of this study was to compare ...

Male calves and culled cows of dairy cattle are used for beef production. However, unlike beef breeds, the genetics of growth performance traits in dairy breeds have not been extensively studied. Here, we performed a genome-wide association study (GWAS) on Holsteins ( = 5,519), Jerseys ( = 1,231), and Red Dairy Cattle ( = 4,410) to identify QTL for growth traits. First, a GWAS was performed wit...

The domestication and development of cattle has considerably impacted human societies, but the histories of cattle breeds and populations have been poorly understood especially for African, Asian, and American breeds. Using genotypes from 43,043 autosomal single nucleotide polymorphism markers scored in 1,543 animals, we evaluate the population structure of 134 domesticated bovid breeds. Regard...