Abstract
Yanbian cattle is inhabitant of North of China, exhibiting many phenotypic features, such as long, dense body hair, and abundant intramuscular fat, designed to combat the extreme cold climate adaption. In the current study, we studied the cold tolerance of nine Yanbian cattle by whole genome resequencing and compared with African tropical cattle, N’Dama, as a control group. Yanbian cattle was aligned to the Bos taurus reference genome (ARS-UCD1.2) yielding an average of 10.8 fold coverage. The positive selective sweep analysis for the cold adaption in Yanbian cattle were analyzed using composite likelihood ratio (CLR) and nucleotide diversity (θπ), resulting in 292 overlapped genes. The strongest selective signal was found on BTA16 with potential mutation in CORT gene, a regulatory gene of primary hormone in the hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenal (HPA) axis, is reported to be associated with the cold stress, representedfour missense mutations (c.269C > T, p.Lys90Ile; c.251A > G, p.Glu84Gly; c.112C > T, p.Pro38Ser; c.86G > A, p.Pro29His). Meanwhile another gene on BTA6, showed significantly higher selective sweep signals for a cold adapted trait for hair follicle and length development, FGF5 (fibroblast growth factor 5) with a missense mutation (c.191C > T, p.Ser64Phe). Moreover, cold adapted Yanbian cattle was statistically compared with the hot adapted N’Dama cattle, a taurine cattle reported to show superior heat tolerance than zebu cattle, making them better adapted to the hot regions of Africa. XP-CLR, Fst, and θπ ratio were used to compare both breeds, yielding 487, 924, and 346 genes respectively. Among the 12 overlapped genes, (CD36) (c.638A > G, p.Lys 213Arg) involved in fat digestion and absorption plays an important role in membrane transport of long-chain fatty acid and its expression could increase in cold exposure. Henceforth, our study provides a novel genetic insights into the cold climate adaptation of Yanbian cattle and identified three candidate genes (CORT, FGF5, and CD36), which can add to an understanding of the cold climate adaptation of Yanbian cattle.
Highlights
Cold climate adaptation is a general term used to describe the physiological functions associated with cold adaptation
The transition–transversion ratio (Ts/Tv) ratio indicate the quality of resequencing, which was calculated to be 2.36 and 2.39 in Yanbian and N’Dama cattle respectively, comparable with the previous studies (Tables 1 and 2) (Choi et al, 2013; Choi et al, 2015)
As for the heterozygous and homozygous ratio were concerned in the detected SNPs, the higher ratio of Yanbian cattle suggests that it’s population structure maybe normal and have a high heterozygosity rate
Summary
Cold climate adaptation is a general term used to describe the physiological functions associated with cold adaptation. To protect tissues from cold damage, the body adopts different processes, which increases warm blood flow near the surface of the skin (Cannon and Nedergaard, 2011). Those adaptation mechanisms, as well as biological processes, suggest the complex mechanisms of adaptation to cold. Unlike majority of Chinese indigenous breeds, Yanbian cattle have had no ancestral to breed with indicine cattle (Xin et al, 2014). They are mainly used as herbivores, especially in the rice fields but are increasingly used for the beef purpose. It is an ideal taurine to be compared with Yanbian cattle to identify the potential temperature regulating genes and pathways
Sign-in/Register to view highlights & summary Talk to us
Join us for a 30 min session where you can share your feedback and ask us any queries you have
Schedule a callDisclaimer: All third-party content on this website/platform is and will remain the property of their respective owners and is provided on "as is" basis without any warranties, express or implied. Use of third-party content does not indicate any affiliation, sponsorship with or endorsement by them. Any references to third-party content is to identify the corresponding services and shall be considered fair use under The CopyrightLaw.
