Location: Agricultural Genetic Resources Preservation Research
Project Number: 3012-31000-007-018-S
Project Type: Non-Assistance Cooperative Agreement
Start Date: Aug 2, 2024
End Date: Aug 1, 2028
Objective:
To assess performance and genotypic differences in the grand- daughters of Lost-Y Chromosome bulls that were obtained from the collection. Results to date indicate that daughters performance was similar or exceeded daughters sired by contemporary bulls. This unexpected result seems to be caused by breaking up runs of homozygosity and therefore creating more heterozygous loci. This project will serve to answer such questions.
Approach:
Daughter performance (milk yield, fertility, etc.) from the reconstituted lineages will be compared to modern lineage herd mates. A genome wide association study will be performed to identify genomic regions that have shifted in response to selection and where heterozygosity is favorably associated with performance. We will use a two-fold approach, where the first approach is a standard GWAS. For the second approach, we will first identify SNP from literature known to associate with performance and SNP from highly conserved genes. We will then evaluate how frequencies of these SNP vary in modern and reconstituted lines. For SNP under apparent selection (increased or decreased frequency in modern lineages) we will examine whether they are associated with daughter performance individually and collectively.
