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ARS Home » Northeast Area » Beltsville, Maryland (BARC) » Beltsville Agricultural Research Center » Animal Genomics and Improvement Laboratory » Research » Publications at this Location » Publication #299289
Title: A genome-wide survey reveals a deletion polymorphism associated with resistance to gastrointestinal nematodes in Angus cattle

Author
item XU, LINGYANG - University Of Maryland
item HOU, YALI - Chinese Academy Of Sciences
item Bickhart, Derek
item SONG, JIUZHOU - University Of Maryland
item Van Tassell, Curtis - Curt
item Sonstegard, Tad
item Liu, Ge - George

Submitted to: Functional and Integrative Genomics
Publication Type: Peer Reviewed Journal
Publication Acceptance Date: 2/9/2014
Publication Date: 4/10/2014
Citation: Xu, L., Hou, Y., Bickhart, D.M., Song, J., Van Tassell, C.P., Sonstegard, T.S., Liu, G. 2014. A genome-wide survey reveals a deletion polymorphism associated with resistance to gastrointestinal nematodes in Angus cattle. Functional and Integrative Genomics. DOI:14(2):333-9.

Interpretive Summary: Gastrointestinal nematode infections are a worldwide threat to animal health and production. Using a genome-wide association study based on copy number variations (CNV), we identified one deletion CNV and its neighboring genes associated with parasite resistance. Farmers, Scientist, and policy planners who need improve animal health and production based on genome-enable animal selection will benefit from this chapter.

Technical Abstract: Gastrointestinal (GI) nematode infections are a worldwide threat to animal health and production. In this study, we performed a genome-wide association study between copy number variations (CNV) and resistance to GI nematodes in an Angus cattle population. Using a linear regression analysis, we identified one deletion CNV which reaches genome-wide significance after Bonferroni correction. With multiple mapped human olfactory receptor genes but no annotated bovine genes in the region, this significantly associated CNV displays high population frequencies (58.26%) with a length of 104.8 kb on chr7. We further investigated the linkage disequilibrium (LD) relationships between this CNV and its nearby SNPs and genes. The underlining haplotype blocks contain immune related genes such as ZNF496 and NLRP3. As this CNV co-segregates with linked SNPs and associated genes, we suspect it could contribute to the detected variations in gene expression and thus differences in host parasite resistance.