Genome-Wide Survey of SNP Variation Uncovers the Genetic Structure of Cattle Breeds
Not Just Dinner on Legs
Several thousand years ago, human beings realized the virtues of domesticating wild animals as easy meat. Soon other possibilities became apparent, and as revealed in a series of papers in this issue, early pastoralists became selective about breeding for wool, leather, milk, and muscle power. In two papers, Gibbs et al. report on the bovine genome sequence (p. 522; see the cover, the Perspective by Lewin, and the Policy Forum by Roberts) and trace the diversity and genetic history of cattle (p. 528), while Chessa et al. (p. 532) survey the occurrence of endogenous retroviruses in sheep and map their distribution to historical waves of human selection and dispersal across Europe. Finally, Ludwig et al. (p. 485) note the origins of variation in the coat-color of horses and suggest that it is most likely to have been selected for by humans in need of good-looking transport.
Abstract
The imprints of domestication and breed development on the genomes of livestock likely differ from those of companion animals. A deep draft sequence assembly of shotgun reads from a single Hereford female and comparative sequences sampled from six additional breeds were used to develop probes to interrogate 37,470 single-nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) in 497 cattle from 19 geographically and biologically diverse breeds. These data show that cattle have undergone a rapid recent decrease in effective population size from a very large ancestral population, possibly due to bottlenecks associated with domestication, selection, and breed formation. Domestication and artificial selection appear to have left detectable signatures of selection within the cattle genome, yet the current levels of diversity within breeds are at least as great as exists within humans.
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Published In
Science
Volume 324 | Issue 5926
24 April 2009
24 April 2009
Copyright
Copyright © 2009, American Association for the Advancement of Science.
Submission history
Received: 31 October 2008
Accepted: 16 March 2009
Published in print: 24 April 2009
Acknowledgments
The Bovine Hapmap Consortium funded by the National Human Genome Research Institute of the National Institutes of Health, U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Agricultural Research Service (USDA-ARS) and Cooperative State Research, Education and Extension Service (USDA CSREES), the Research Council of Norway, as well as: American Angus Association, American Hereford Association, American Jersey Cattle Association, AgResearch (New Zealand), Beef CRC and Meat and Livestock Australia for the Australian Brahman Breeders Association, Beefmaster Breeders United, The Brazilian Agricultural Research Corporation (Embrapa), Brown Swiss Association, Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organization, Dairy InSight, GENO Breeding and Artificial Insemination Association—Norway, Herd Book/France Limousin Selection, Holstein Association USA, International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA)—United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO)/IAEA Vienna, International Livestock Research Institute—Kenya, Italian Piedmontese Breeders—Parco Tecnologico Padano, Italian Romagnola Society—Università Cattolica del Sacro Cuore, Livestock Improvement Corporation, Meat and Wool New Zealand. North American Limousin Foundation, Red Angus Association of America, Roslin Institute for UK Guernsey, and Sygen (now Genus). See SOM for additional acknowledgements. The genome sequence (AAFC03000000) and SNPs (SOM) are available from NCBI.
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