Microsatellite analysis of a sample of Uruguayan Creole bulls (Bos taurus)

Abstract

The Uruguayan Creole cattle genetic reserve consists of a herd of about 600 animals (bulls, cows and calves) located in an indigenous habitat of 650 hectares. In a previous study, a random sample from this herd showed high heterozygosity and a Hardy-Weinberg equilibrium for markers of major genes related to milk production. To study its genetic diversity we genotyped a sample of bulls (N = 19 out of 23 for the whole herd) using the PCR reaction with a set of 17 microsatellite markers. Between two and seven different alleles were identified per microsatellite in a total of 73 alleles. The expected mean heterozygosity (He) per locus was between 0.465 and 0.801, except for microsatellite HEL13 which gave a He value of 0.288. The expected mean heterozygosity was 0.623 and the polymorphic information content (PIC) was between 0.266 for HEL13 and 0.794 for CSSM66. The genetic diversity found in polymorphic markers in the breeding bulls of this Creole cattle population supports previous genetic analyses using major production genes and indicate that further studies should be carried out on this population to provide data of interest to cattle production.

Genetic diversity analysis of the Uruguayan Creole cattle breed using microsatellites and mtDNA markers

“…Markers BM2113, CSSM66, INRA37, HEL9, and TGLA227 were very informative in this study due to their high polymorphism, heterozygosity and PIC, similar to what was previously found in a sample of breeding bulls with these same microsatellites (Armstrong et al, 2006a). These markers could be considered suitable for an efficient tool in the genetic management of this population, since its feral condition makes it difficult for a more thorough genealogical control (Delgado et al, 2012).…”

“…org). The amplification was performed by polymerase chain reaction (PCR) in three multiplex reactions: multiplex I (BM1314, CSSM66, ILSTS011, INRA37, and ETH10); multiplex II (BM1818, BM2113, BM8125, INRA32, and MM12); and multiplex III (HAUT27, HEL13, HEL9, CSRM60, ILSTS006, INRA63, and TGLA227), as described elsewhere (Armstrong et al, 2006a). The amplified fragments were visualized by electrophoresis on 6% polyacrylamide gels using an automatic sequencer ABI377XL (Applied Biosystems, Foster City, CA, USA).…”

“…Their adaptation to different environments allowed the expression of high levels of genetic variability, this being a source of hidden alleles of potential use in breeding programs and thus important to study and preserve (Barrera et al, 2006;De Alba Martínez, 2011). The analysis of nuclear and cytoplasmic markers, such as microsatellites and mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA), is a valuable tool to infer and assess their genetic diversity and relationships with other cattle populations of America, Europe and Africa (Armstrong et al, 2006a;Ginja et al, 2010;Delgado et al, 2012).…”

“…The management of the population since then has consisted in limiting the number of breeding males and the periodic culling of a certain number of animals as a way of controlling population size. Different molecular markers have been analyzed in this population, including a set of 18 microsatellite loci in breeding bulls (Armstrong et al, 2006a), RAPD markers (Rincón et al, 2000), the polymorphic region of the DRB3.2 gene of the major histocompatibility complex and major genes related to milk and beef production (Postiglioni et al, 2002;Rincón et al, 2006;Armstrong et al, 2011).…”

Genetic diversity of the Brazilian Creole cattle Pé-duro assessed by microsatellites and mitochondrial DNA

“…Colombian Creole Casanare (Sastre, 2003), Uruguayan Creole (Armstrong et al, 2006), native Jersey from the Isle of Jersey in the UK (Chikhi et al, 2004), Asian native cattle breeds (Kim et al, 2002) and Portuguese native breeds, encompassing the Alentejana, Arouquesa, Barrosa, Brava de Lide, Garvonesa, Minhota, Mertolenga, Maronesa and Mirandesa (Mateus et al, 2004). Pé-duro was more informative when confronting the average number of alleles in a small set of microsatellites (Table 4).…”