A microsatellite survey of cattle from a centre of origin: the Near East

Abstract

Eight humpless cattle breeds from the Near East, three from Europe, one from West Africa and two zebu breeds from India were screened with 20 microsatellite loci. Breeds from the Near East revealed considerable levels of introgression from zebu cattle, which was apparent most in populations from the East and which declined in populations further West. This nonrandom pattern is suggestive of the introduction of zebu cattle from the East. Notwithstanding the overlay of zebu alleles, it was possible to demonstrate that Near Eastern cattle exhibited significantly higher levels of allelic diversity than breeds from other regions, which is consistent with the view that this region represents a primary domestication centre for Bos taurus cattle. The hypothesis that B. taurus and B. indicus cattle have separate domestic origins is also supported by the survey, a large genetic divergence being apparent between the nonhybrid taurine and zebu groups.

Geographic distribution of haplotype diversity at the bovine casein locus

“…CSN3*H is present in various southern or eastern European breeds, occurs with a relatively high frequency in Turkish cattle breeds and is predominant in Bos indicus breeds. These observations suggest zebu introgressions in southern and eastern European cattle and confirms the results obtained by studies using microsatellites [25] and mitochondria DNA sequences [10].…”

“…If both these breeds are removed from the analysis, correlations of LT and LO with genetic variation show only marginal significance (P = 0.076 for both) and should therefore be assessed with care. It appears possible that the diversity gradients were also formed by differentiated selection or by an introgression of the genetically diverse Bos indicus, increasing the variability in a southern European hybridisation zone [7,10,25]. Finally, surprising low linkage disequilibrium (LD) was observed between the casein genes, resulting in few breeds with significant differences between the calculated haplotype frequencies and the haplotype frequencies expected under an assumption of allelic independence.…”

“…These studies also suggest a higher genetic diversity of south eastern European breeds compared with those of north western Europe. Additionally, separate domestication and subsequent introgressions of indicine genes into taurine populations in Africa [27] and the Near East [25] produced higher genetic diversity within the hybridisation zones.…”

Revealing fine scale subpopulation structure in the Vietnamese H'mong cattle breed for conservation purposes

“…From this database, genotypes for 8 markers (BM1818, ETH3, INRA063, HEL1, TGLA227, TGLA122, BM2113, INRA023) were found to be in common with 7 relevant breeds including Asian taurine breeds: the Hanwoo Korean, the Chinese Yellow Yanbian breed and the Japanese Black breeds published by Kim et al [9]. The set included 2 Indian breeds first analysed by Loftus et al [10] and later completed by Ibeagha-Awemu et al [11] who also published the German Simmental included in the dataset. The information about the origin of the Holstein used was not available (Table 1, Additional File 1).…”

Multiple paternal origins of domestic cattle revealed by Y-specific interspersed multilocus microsatellites

“…Cattle history, inferred from mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA) markers (Bradley et al, 1996;Loftus et al, 1994Loftus et al, , 1999Troy et al, 2001;Edwards et al, 2007a;Achilli et al, 2008), suggests that cattle (Bos taurus and Bos indicus) domestication involved at least two genetically distinct auroch (Bos primigenius) species in the Near East and great Indus Valley. Most European cattle resulted from the expansion of a small cattle population from the Near East after domestication, with one (T3) of the four major haplogroups (T, T1, T2 and T3) identified in the Near East predominating in the mainland continent.…”