Dataset Information

Insights into the genetic history of French cattle from dense SNP data on 47 worldwide breeds.

ABSTRACT:

Background

Modern cattle originate from populations of the wild extinct aurochs through a few domestication events which occurred about 8,000 years ago. Newly domesticated populations subsequently spread worldwide following breeder migration routes. The resulting complex historical origins associated with both natural and artificial selection have led to the differentiation of numerous different cattle breeds displaying a broad phenotypic variety over a short period of time.

Methodology/principal findings

This study gives a detailed assessment of cattle genetic diversity based on 1,121 individuals sampled in 47 populations from different parts of the world (with a special focus on French cattle) genotyped for 44,706 autosomal SNPs. The analyzed data set consisted of new genotypes for 296 individuals representing 14 French cattle breeds which were combined to those available from three previously published studies. After characterizing SNP polymorphism in the different populations, we performed a detailed analysis of genetic structure at both the individual and population levels. We further searched for spatial patterns of genetic diversity among 23 European populations, most of them being of French origin, under the recently developed spatial Principal Component analysis framework.

Conclusions/significance

Overall, such high throughput genotyping data confirmed a clear partitioning of the cattle genetic diversity into distinct breeds. In addition, patterns of differentiation among the three main groups of populations--the African taurine, the European taurine and zebus--may provide some additional support for three distinct domestication centres. Finally, among the European cattle breeds investigated, spatial patterns of genetic diversity were found in good agreement with the two main migration routes towards France, initially postulated based on archeological evidence.

SUBMITTER: Gautier M

PROVIDER: S-EPMC2948016 | biostudies-literature | 2010 Sep

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature

ACCESS DATA

Publications

Insights into the genetic history of French cattle from dense SNP data on 47 worldwide breeds.

Gautier Mathieu M Laloë Denis D Moazami-Goudarzi Katayoun K

PloS one 20100930 9

<h4>Background</h4>Modern cattle originate from populations of the wild extinct aurochs through a few domestication events which occurred about 8,000 years ago. Newly domesticated populations subsequently spread worldwide following breeder migration routes. The resulting complex historical origins associated with both natural and artificial selection have led to the differentiation of numerous different cattle breeds displaying a broad phenotypic variety over a short period of time.<h4>Methodolo ...[more]

PMID: 20927341

Similar Datasets

Project description:BackgroundAssessment of genetic diversity and population structure provides important control metrics to avoid genetic erosion, inbreeding depression and crossbreeding between exotic and locally-adapted cattle breeds since these events can have deleterious consequences and eventually lead to extinction. Historically, the Alpine Arc represents an important pocket of cattle biodiversity with a large number of autochthonous breeds that provide a fundamental source of income for the entire regional economy. By using genotype data from medium-density single nucleotide polymorphism (SNP) arrays, we performed a genome-wide comparative study of 23 cattle populations from the Alpine Arc and three cosmopolitan breeds.ResultsAfter filtering, we obtained a final genotyping dataset consisting of 30,176 SNPs for 711 individuals. The local breeds showed high or intermediate values of genetic diversity compared to the highly selected cosmopolitan breeds. Patterns of genetic differentiation, multidimensional scaling, admixture analysis and the constructed phylogenetic tree showed convergence, which indicates the presence of gene flow among the breeds according to both geographic origin and historical background. Among the most differentiated breeds, we identified the modern Brown cattle. In spite of admixture events, several local breeds have preserved distinctive characteristics, which is probably due to differences in genetic origin and geographic location.ConclusionsThis study represents one of the most comprehensive genome-wide analysis of the Alpine cattle breeds to date. Using such a large dataset that includes the majority of the local breeds found in this region, allowed us to expand knowledge on the evaluation and status of Alpine cattle biodiversity. Our results indicate that although many of the analyzed local breeds are listed as endangered, they still harbor a large amount of genetic diversity, even when compared to some cosmopolitan breeds. This finding, together with the reconstruction of the phylogeny and the relationships between these Alpine Arc cattle breeds, provide crucial insights not only into the improvement of genetic stocks but also into the implementation of future conservation strategies.

Project description:BackgroundGenotyping with the medium-density Bovine SNP50 BeadChip® (50K) is now standard in cattle. The high-density BovineHD BeadChip®, which contains 777,609 single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs), was developed in 2010. Increasing marker density increases the level of linkage disequilibrium between quantitative trait loci (QTL) and SNPs and the accuracy of QTL localization and genomic selection. However, re-genotyping all animals with the high-density chip is not economically feasible. An alternative strategy is to genotype part of the animals with the high-density chip and to impute high-density genotypes for animals already genotyped with the 50K chip. Thus, it is necessary to investigate the error rate when imputing from the 50K to the high-density chip.MethodsFive thousand one hundred and fifty three animals from 16 breeds (89 to 788 per breed) were genotyped with the high-density chip. Imputation error rates from the 50K to the high-density chip were computed for each breed with a validation set that included the 20% youngest animals. Marker genotypes were masked for animals in the validation population in order to mimic 50K genotypes. Imputation was carried out using the Beagle 3.3.0 software.ResultsMean allele imputation error rates ranged from 0.31% to 2.41% depending on the breed. In total, 1980 SNPs had high imputation error rates in several breeds, which is probably due to genome assembly errors, and we recommend to discard these in future studies. Differences in imputation accuracy between breeds were related to the high-density-genotyped sample size and to the genetic relationship between reference and validation populations, whereas differences in effective population size and level of linkage disequilibrium showed limited effects. Accordingly, imputation accuracy was higher in breeds with large populations and in dairy breeds than in beef breeds. More than 99% of the alleles were correctly imputed if more than 300 animals were genotyped at high-density. No improvement was observed when multi-breed imputation was performed.ConclusionIn all breeds, imputation accuracy was higher than 97%, which indicates that imputation to the high-density chip was accurate. Imputation accuracy depends mainly on the size of the reference population and the relationship between reference and target populations.

Project description:Levels of inbreeding in cattle populations have increased in the past due to the use of a limited number of bulls for artificial insemination. High levels of inbreeding lead to reduced genetic diversity and inbreeding depression. Various estimators based on different sources, e.g., pedigree or genomic data, have been used to estimate inbreeding coefficients in cattle populations. However, the comparative advantage of using full sequence data to assess inbreeding is unknown. We used pedigree and genomic data at different densities from 50k to full sequence variants to compare how different methods performed for the estimation of inbreeding levels in three different cattle breeds.Five different estimates for inbreeding were calculated and compared in this study: pedigree based inbreeding coefficient (F(PED)); run of homozygosity (ROH)-based inbreeding coefficients (F(ROH)); genomic relationship matrix (GRM)-based inbreeding coefficients (F(GRM)); inbreeding coefficients based on excess of homozygosity (F(HOM)) and correlation of uniting gametes (F(UNI)). Estimates using ROH provided the direct estimated levels of autozygosity in the current populations and are free effects of allele frequencies and incomplete pedigrees which may increase in inaccuracy in estimation of inbreeding. The highest correlations were observed between F(ROH) estimated from the full sequence variants and the F(ROH) estimated from 50k SNP (single nucleotide polymorphism) genotypes. The estimator based on the correlation between uniting gametes (F(UNI)) using full genome sequences was also strongly correlated with F(ROH) detected from sequence data.Estimates based on ROH directly reflected levels of homozygosity and were not influenced by allele frequencies, unlike the three other estimates evaluated (F(GRM), F(HOM) and FU(NI)), which depended on estimated allele frequencies. F(PED) suffered from limited pedigree depth. Marker density affects ROH estimation. Detecting ROH based on 50k chip data was observed to give estimates similar to ROH from sequence data. In the absence of full sequence data ROH based on 50k can be used to access homozygosity levels in individuals. However, genotypes denser than 50k are required to accurately detect short ROH that are most likely identical by descent (IBD).

Project description:BackgroundDuring the Neolithic expansion, cattle accompanied humans and spread from their domestication centres to colonize the ancient world. In addition, European cattle occasionally intermingled with both indicine cattle and local aurochs resulting in an exclusive pattern of genetic diversity. Among the most ancient European cattle are breeds that belong to the so-called Podolian trunk, the history of which is still not well established. Here, we used genome-wide single nucleotide polymorphism (SNP) data on 806 individuals belonging to 36 breeds to reconstruct the origin and diversification of Podolian cattle and to provide a reliable scenario of the European colonization, through an approximate Bayesian computation random forest (ABC-RF) approach.ResultsOur results indicate that European Podolian cattle display higher values of genetic diversity indices than both African taurine and Asian indicine breeds. Clustering analyses show that Podolian breeds share close genomic relationships, which suggests a likely common genetic ancestry. Among the simulated and tested scenarios of the colonization of Europe from taurine cattle, the greatest support was obtained for the model assuming at least two waves of diffusion. Time estimates are in line with an early migration from the domestication centre of non-Podolian taurine breeds followed by a secondary migration of Podolian breeds. The best fitting model also suggests that the Italian Podolian breeds are the result of admixture between different genomic pools.ConclusionsThis comprehensive dataset that includes most of the autochthonous cattle breeds belonging to the so-called Podolian trunk allowed us not only to shed light onto the origin and diversification of this group of cattle, but also to gain new insights into the diffusion of European cattle. The most well-supported scenario of colonization points to two main waves of migrations: with one that occurred alongside with the Neolithic human expansion and gave rise to the non-Podolian taurine breeds, and a more recent one that favoured the diffusion of European Podolian. In this process, we highlight the importance of both the Mediterranean and Danube routes in promoting European cattle colonization. Moreover, we identified admixture as a driver of diversification in Italy, which could represent a melting pot for Podolian cattle.

Dataset Information

Insights into the genetic history of French cattle from dense SNP data on 47 worldwide breeds.

Background

Methodology/principal findings

Conclusions/significance

Publications

Insights into the genetic history of French cattle from dense SNP data on 47 worldwide breeds.

Similar Datasets

OmicsDI is part of the ELIXIR infrastructure

Tweets