Project description:The Toll-like receptor (TLR) and peptidoglycan recognition protein 1 (PGLYRP1) genes play key roles in the innate immune systems of mammals. While the TLRs recognize a variety of invading pathogens and induce innate immune responses, PGLYRP1 is directly microbicidal. We used custom allele-specific assays to genotype and validate 220 diallelic variants, including 54 nonsynonymous SNPs in 11 bovine innate immune genes (TLR1-TLR10, PGLYRP1) for 37 cattle breeds. Bayesian haplotype reconstructions and median joining networks revealed haplotype sharing between Bos taurus taurus and Bos taurus indicus breeds at every locus, and we were unable to differentiate between the specialized B. t. taurus beef and dairy breeds, despite an average polymorphism density of one locus per 219 bp. Ninety-nine tagSNPs and one tag insertion-deletion polymorphism were sufficient to predict 100% of the variation at all 11 innate immune loci in both subspecies and their hybrids, whereas 58 tagSNPs captured 100% of the variation at 172 loci in B. t. taurus. PolyPhen and SIFT analyses of nonsynonymous SNPs encoding amino acid replacements indicated that the majority of these substitutions were benign, but up to 31% were expected to potentially impact protein function. Several diversity-based tests provided support for strong purifying selection acting on TLR10 in B. t. taurus cattle. These results will broadly impact efforts related to bovine translational genomics.
Project description:We present here the assembly of the bovine genome. The assembly method combines the BAC plus WGS local assembly used for the rat and sea urchin with the whole genome shotgun (WGS) only assembly used for many other animal genomes including the rhesus macaque.The assembly process consisted of multiple phases: First, BACs were assembled with BAC generated sequence, then subsequently in combination with the individual overlapping WGS reads. Different assembly parameters were tested to separately optimize the performance for each BAC assembly of the BAC and WGS reads. In parallel, a second assembly was produced using only the WGS sequences and a global whole genome assembly method. The two assemblies were combined to create a more complete genome representation that retained the high quality BAC-based local assembly information, but with gaps between BACs filled in with the WGS-only assembly. Finally, the entire assembly was placed on chromosomes using the available map information.Over 90% of the assembly is now placed on chromosomes. The estimated genome size is 2.87 Gb which represents a high degree of completeness, with 95% of the available EST sequences found in assembled contigs. The quality of the assembly was evaluated by comparison to 73 finished BACs, where the draft assembly covers between 92.5 and 100% (average 98.5%) of the finished BACs. The assembly contigs and scaffolds align linearly to the finished BACs, suggesting that misassemblies are rare. Genotyping and genetic mapping of 17,482 SNPs revealed that more than 99.2% were correctly positioned within the Btau_4.0 assembly, confirming the accuracy of the assembly.The biological analysis of this bovine genome assembly is being published, and the sequence data is available to support future bovine research.
Project description:Any novel protein introduced into the GM crops need to be evaluated for cross affinity on living organisms. Many researchers are currently focusing on the impact of Bacillus thuringiensis cotton on soil and microbial diversity by field experiments. In spite of this, in silico approach might be helpful to elucidate the impact of cry genes. The crystal a protein which was produced by Bt at the time of sporulation has been used as a biological pesticide to target the insectivorous pests like Cry1Ac for Helicoverpa armigera and Cry2Ab for Spodoptera sp. and Heliothis sp. Here, we present the comprehensive in silico analysis of Cry1Ac and Cry2Ab proteins with available in silico tools, databases and docking servers. Molecular docking of Cry1Ac with procarboxypeptidase from Helicoverpa armigera and Cry1Ac with Leucine aminopeptidase from Bos taurus has showed the 125(th) amino acid position to be the preference site of Cry1Ac protein. The structures were compared with each other and it showed 5% of similarity. The cross affinity of this toxin that have confirmed the earlier reports of ill effects of Bt cotton consumed by cattle.
Project description:Proteins are the major constituents of muscle and are key molecules regulating the metabolic changes during conversion of muscle to meat. Brazil is one of the largest exporters of beef and most Brazilian cattle are composed by zebu (Nellore) genotype. Bos indicus beef is generally leaner and tougher than Bos taurus such as Angus. The aim of this study was to compare the muscle proteomic and phosphoproteomic profile of Angus and Nellore. Seven animals of each breed previously subjected the same growth management were confined for 84 days. Proteins were extracted from Longissimus lumborum samples collected immediately after slaughter and separated by two-dimensional electrophoresis. Pro-Q Diamond stain was used in phosphoproteomics. Proteins identification was performed using matrix assisted laser desorption/ionization time-of-flight mass spectrometry. Tropomyosin alpha-1 chain, troponin-T, myosin light chain-1 fragment, cytoplasmic malate dehydrogenase, alpha-enolase and 78 kDa glucose-regulated protein were more abundant in Nellore, while myosin light chain 3, prohibitin, mitochondrial stress-70 protein and heat shock 70 kDa protein 6 were more abundant in Angus (P<0.05). Nellore had higher phosphorylation of myosin regulatory light chain-2, alpha actin-1, triosephosphate isomerase and 14-3-3 protein epsilon. However, Angus had greater phosphorylation of phosphoglucomutase-1 and troponin-T (P<0.05). Therefore, proteins involved in contraction and muscle organization, myofilaments expressed in fast or slow-twitch fibers and heat shock proteins localized in mitochondria or sarcoplasmic reticulum and involved in cell flux of calcium and apoptosis might be associated with differences in beef quality between Angus and Nellore. Furthermore, prohibitin appears to be a potential biomarker of intramuscular fat in cattle. Additionally, differences in phosphorylation of myofilaments and glycolytic enzymes could be involved with differences in muscle contraction force, susceptibility to calpain, apoptosis and postmortem glycolysis, which might also be related to differences in beef quality among Angus and Nellore.
Project description:Cow antibodies are unusual in having an exceptionally long third complementarity determining region of the heavy chain (CDR H3). These CDR H3s have a multitude of cysteines and form a distinct domain characterized by a ?-ribbon 'stalk' and disulfide bonded 'knob'. Cows appear to utilize somatic hypermutation of a single VDJ rearrangement to produce an astounding variety of distinct CDR H3 sequences with different disulfide bonding patterns within the knob. Thus, cows may be unique amongst vertebrates in evolving an antibody system with both a different scaffold for binding antigen as well as an unusual diversity creating process.
Project description:Numerical approaches to high-density single nucleotide polymorphism (SNP) data are often employed independently to address individual questions. We linked independent approaches in a bioinformatics pipeline for further insight. The pipeline driven by heterozygosity and Hardy-Weinberg equilibrium (HWE) analyses was applied to characterize Bos taurus and Bos indicus ancestry. We infer a gene co-heterozygosity network that regulates bovine fertility, from data on 18,363 cattle with genotypes for 729,068 SNP. Hierarchical clustering separated populations according to Bos taurus and Bos indicus ancestry. The weights of the first principal component were subjected to Normal mixture modelling allowing the estimation of a gene's contribution to the Bos taurus-Bos indicus axis. We used deviation from HWE, contribution to Bos indicus content and association to fertility traits to select 1,284 genes. With this set, we developed a co-heterozygosity network where the group of genes annotated as fertility-related had significantly higher Bos indicus content compared to other functional classes of genes, while the group of genes associated with milk production had significantly higher Bos taurus content. The network analysis resulted in capturing novel gene associations of relevance to bovine domestication events. We report transcription factors that are likely to regulate genes associated with cattle domestication and tropical adaptation. Our pipeline can be generalized to any scenarios where population structure requires scrutiny at the molecular level, particularly in the presence of a priori set of genes known to impact a phenotype of evolutionary interest such as fertility.
Project description:BACKGROUND:Bos taurus and Bos indicus are two main sub-species of cattle. However, the differential copy number variations (CNVs) between them are not yet well studied. RESULTS:Based on the new high-quality cattle reference genome ARS-UCD1.2, we identified 13,234 non-redundant CNV regions (CNVRs) from 73 animals of 10 cattle breeds (4 Bos taurus and 6 Bos indicus), by integrating three detection strategies. While 6990 CNVRs (52.82%) were shared by Bos taurus and Bos indicus, large CNV differences were discovered between them and these differences could be used to successfully separate animals into two subspecies. We found that 2212 and 538 genes uniquely overlapped with either indicine-specific CNVRs and or taurine-specific CNVRs, respectively. Based on FST, we detected 16 candidate lineage-differential CNV segments (top 0.1%) under selection, which overlapped with eight genes (CTNNA1, ENSBTAG00000004415, PKN2, BMPER, PDE1C, DNAJC18, MUSK, and PLCXD3). Moreover, we obtained 1.74 Mbp indicine-specific sequences, which could only be mapped on the Bos indicus reference genome UOA_Brahman_1. We found these sequences and their associated genes were related to heat resistance, lipid and ATP metabolic process, and muscle development under selection. We further analyzed and validated the top significant lineage-differential CNV. This CNV overlapped genes related to muscle cell differentiation, which might be generated from a retropseudogene of CTH but was deleted along Bos indicus lineage. CONCLUSIONS:This study presents a genome wide CNV comparison between Bos taurus and Bos indicus. It supplied essential genome diversity information for understanding of adaptation and phenotype differences between the Bos taurus and Bos indicus populations.
Project description:The liver of dairy cows naturally displays a series of metabolic adaptation during the periparturient period in response to the increasing nutrient requirement of lactation. The hepatic adaptation is partly regulated by insulin resistance and it is affected by the prepartal energy intake level of cows. We aimed to investigate the metabolic changes in the liver of dairy cows during the periparturient at gene expression level and to study the effect of prepartal energy level on the metabolic adaptation at gene expression level.B13:N13 Overall design: Sixteen Ayrshire dairy cows were allocated to a controlled-energy diet (CON) or a high-energy diet (HIGH) for 6 weeks before the predicted parturition. Microarrary was conducted for liver samples at 8 d prior to the predicted parturition (-8 d) and 1 d and 9 d after the actual parturition (1 d and 9 d).
Project description:Domestic cattle (Bos taurus taurus) are adapted to digest high-roughage diets, but in confinement they are commonly fed low-roughage, high-energy diets. This practice may leave cattle with an unfulfilled need to consume forage. A way to quantify motivation is to require animals to work to access a resource. Using this method, we evaluated cattle motivation to obtain forage when fed high- or low-roughage diets during and 30 d before the study. Individual heifers were fed Sudan grass (Sorghum × drummondii) hay (high roughage, n = 6) or a diet with 12% forage (as fed, low roughage, n = 6) in an open feed trough. In a second trough, 200 g/d of Sudan grass hay were fed behind a push gate, to which additional weight was added daily until heifers no longer pushed. We predicted heifers would push heavier weights, show a shorter latency, and spend more time pushing the gate when fed a low- vs. high-roughage diet. Indeed, heifers fed a low-roughage diet pushed the gate immediately after hay delivery (1.7 min) and much sooner than those fed a high-roughage diet (75.7 min). On the day before they no longer pushed the gate, latency for heifers in the low-roughage treatment remained only 3.2 min after hay delivery. The suddenness with which they ceased pushing the next day suggests they were unable to move heavier weights to express their motivation. This may explain why maximum weight pushed and time spent pushing the gate did not differ between treatments. The gate pushing by heifers with unrestricted hay access is the first demonstration by cattle of contrafreeloading: performing work to obtain a resource that is simultaneously available for free. In conclusion, consuming forage is important to cattle and is affected by both their primary diet and an internal motivation to work to obtain feed.