Abstract
At the current stage of genetic studies of cattle, more and more attention is being drawn to autochthonous breeds. Native cattle have a number of prominent phenotypic traits and have preserved unique genes and their combinations lost by modern commercial breeds, which would be valuable to use in selective programs. We surveyed polymorphism of the Ukrainian autochthonous Gray breed according to alleles of exon 2 of the BoLA-DRB3 gene. The uniqueness of the gene lies in the broad variability of its allele variants. Significant informativeness at DNA level is quite important for genetic studies. We surveyed allele polymorphism using the PCR-RLFP method on DNA isolated from 88 samples of blood of cows and 5 samples of sperm. We identified 28 alleles, of which 23 variants were nomenclature ones and 5 (jba, *jab, *jbb, *nad and *nda) were “without established nomenclature”, their share accounting for 8.9%. Four alleles *06, *12, *16 and *jba had a frequency above 5% and occupied 69.9% of the breed’s allele fund overall. The commonest allele was BoLA-DRB3.2*16 (44.1%). In total, we found 40 genotypes. Considering the significant dominance of variant *16, as expected, 5 genotypes with its inclusion occurred: *16/*16, *12/*16, *06/*16, *16/*24 and *jba/*16. It was present in the genotype of two out three studied animals. Parameters of heterozygosity, effective number of alleles, Shannon and Pielou indices indicate that Ukrainian Gray cattle are characterized by lowest level of genetic variability and biodiversity according to the BoLA-DRB3 gene compared with other breeds. Due to significant dominance of allele *16, the breed has no inbred motifs. We noted deviation toward increase in homozygosity without deviations from the norm of the distribution according to Hardy-Weinberg equilibrium. The obtained results will be used for genetic-populational programs with the purpose of improving the genetic potential of cattle breeds in terms of economically beneficial traits and diseases of cattle.
Highlights
Diversity of living organisms is determined by the fundamental properties of biological macromolecules, especially nucleic acids, their property to spontaneously undergo changes in structure, leading to changes in genomes, and inherent variability
We demonstrated the results of studying polymorphism, parameters of genetic variability and biodiversity of an autochthonous Ukrainian breed according to alleles of the BoLA-DRB3.2 gene using the PCR-PLFP method
In herd B, we found 25 variants, that 4 alleles DRB3.2*06, *12, *16, *24 і *jba had frequencies higher than 5% (Table 1)
Summary
Diversity of living organisms is determined by the fundamental properties of biological macromolecules, especially nucleic acids, their property to spontaneously undergo changes in structure, leading to changes in genomes, and inherent variability. On this biochemical basis, diversity is the result of three separately acting processes: mutations, natural selection, geographic and reproductive isolation. Expansion of the range of commercial breeds leads to steep decrease and total extinction of low-number native breeds, and loss of unique genes and their combinations developed over prolonged use in agriculture and influence of natural factors (Stolpovskij et al, 1998; Guzjejev, 2014)
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