Background: In the Neolithic, domestic sheep migrated into Europe and subsequently spread in westerly and northwesterly directions. Reconstruction of these migrations and subsequent genetic events requires a more detailed characterization of the current phylogeographic differentiation. Results: We collected 50 K single nucleotide polymorphism (SNP) profiles of Balkan sheep that are currently found near the major Neolithic point of entry into Europe, and combined these data with published genotypes from southwest-Asian, Mediterranean, central-European and north-European sheep and from Asian and European mouflons. We detected clines, ancestral components and admixture by using variants of common analysis tools: geography-informative supervised principal component analysis (PCA), breed-specific admixture analysis, across-breed f 4 profiles and phylogenetic analysis of regional pools of breeds. The regional Balkan sheep populations exhibit considerable genetic overlap, but are clearly distinct from the breeds in surrounding regions. The Asian mouflon did not influence the differentiation of the European domestic sheep and is only distantly related to present-day sheep, including those from Iran where the mouflons were sampled. We demonstrate the occurrence, from southeast to northwest Europe, of a continuously increasing ancestral component of up to 20% contributed by the European mouflon, which is assumed to descend from the original Neolithic domesticates. The overall patterns indicate that the Balkan region and Italy served as post-domestication migration hubs, from which wool sheep reached Spain and north Italy with subsequent migrations northwards. The documented dispersal of Tarentine wool sheep during the Roman period may have been part of this process. Our results also reproduce the documented 18th century admixture of Spanish Merino sheep into several central-European breeds.

Several different phenotypes of the native Pramenka sheep have been developed in the Balkan region for different environmental and socio-cultural conditions. Animals from seven West Balkan Pramenka sheep types were analysed for 15 microsatellite markers and for mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA) and the results were used to assess genetic variation within and among the types and to infer the genetic population structure of the Pramenka sheep. Mean expected heterozygosity and allelic richness over the microsatellite loci and sheep types were 0.78 and 7.9, respectively. A Bayesian statistical method for estimating hidden genetic structure suggested that a core of the largest panmictic population was formed by Serbian, Kosovan, Bosnian, Montenegrin and Albanian types, while Croatian and Macedonian types comprised two other main populations, respectively. Mitochondrial DNA analysis revealed two mtDNA haplogroups in the Pramenka sheep, B and A, with a frequency of 93.7% and 6.3%, respectively. A total of 60 mtDNA haplotypes were found in 64 animals sequenced, and the mean nucleotide and haplotypic diversities over the types were 0.013 and 0.945, respectively. Molecular analysis suggests that the West Balkan Pramenka sheep types have their origins in two distinct maternal lineages of domestic sheep and different Pramenka phenotypes tend to form few panmictic populations. The Pramenka sheep represents a valuable resource of genetic diversity in sheep.

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SUMMARYThe domestic goat is one of the most important livestock species in mountainous area of Albania. In this study thirty microsatellite markers in 183 unrelated individuals from 6 local goat breeds are analyzed. Twenty nine markers had five or more alleles. All loci were polymorphic and a total of 331 alleles were detected. The average number of alleles per locus was 11.03. Within breeds, the mean number of alleles ranged from 7.8 to 8. Mean expected heterozygosity (He) . La consaguinidad para toda la poblacón es más bien alta F IS = 0,093 con un rango de 0,075 a 0,103, la F ST media (≈ 0,02) demostró que el 98% de la variación genética total se debe a la diferenciación genética dentro de cada población.

Background Cellulose is the primary component of the plant cell wall and an important source of energy for the ruminant and microbial protein synthesis in the rumen. Cell wall content is digested by anaerobic fermentation activity mainly of bacteria belonging to species Fibrobacter succinogenes, Ruminicoccus albus, Ruminococcus flavefaciens, and Butyrivibrio fibrisolvens. Bacteria belonging to the species Ruminococcus albus contain cellulosomes that enable it to adhere to and digest cellulose, and its genome encodes cellulases and hemicellulases. This study aimed to perform an in silico comparative characterization and functional analysis of cellulase from Ruminococcus albus to explore physicochemical properties and to estimate primary, secondary, and tertiary structure using various bio-computational tools. The protein sequences of cellulases belonging to 6 different Ruminococcus albus strains were retrieved using UniProt. In in silico composition of amino acids, basic physicochemical characteristics were analyzed using ProtParam and Protscale. Multiple sequence alignment of retrieved sequences was performed using Clustal Omega and the phylogenetic tree was constructed using Mega X software. Bioinformatics tools are used to better understand and determine the 3D structure of cellulase. The predicted model was refined by ModRefiner. Structure alignment between the best-predicted model and the template is applied to evaluate the similarity between structures. Results In this study are demonstrated several physicochemical characteristics of the cellulase enzyme. The instability index values indicate that the proteins are highly stable. Proteins are dominated by random coils and alpha helixes. The aliphatic index was higher than 71 providing information that the proteins are highly thermostable. No transmembrane domain was found in the protein, and the enzyme is extracellular and moderately acidic. The best tertiary structure model of the enzyme was obtained by the use of Raptor X, which was refined by ModRefiner. Raptor X suggested the 6Q1I_A as one of the best homologous templates for the predicted 3D protein structure. Ramachandran plot analysis showed that 90.1% of amino acid residues are within the most favored regions. Conclusions This study provides for the first time insights about the physicochemical properties, structure, and function of cellulase, from Ruminococcus albus, that will help for detection and identification of such enzyme in vivo or in silico.