Implementation of a parentage control system in Portuguese beef-cattle with a panel of microsatellite markers

Abstract

A study was conducted to assess the feasibility of applying a panel of 10 microsatellite markers in parentage control of beef cattle in Portugal. In the first stage, DNA samples were collected from 475 randomly selected animals of the Charolais, Limousin and Preta breeds. Across breeds and genetic markers, means for average number of alleles, effective number of alleles, expected heterozygosity and polymorphic information content, were 8.20, 4.43, 0.733 and 0.70, respectively. Enlightenment from the various markers differed among breeds, but the set of 10 markers resulted in a combined probability above 0.9995 in the ability to exclude a random putative parent. The marker-set thus developed was later used for parentage control in a group of 140 calves from several breeds, where there was the suspicion of possible faulty parentage recording. Overall, 76.4% of the calves in this group were compatible with the recorded parents, with most incompatibilities due to misidentification of the dam. Efforts must be made to improve the quality of pedigree information, with particular emphasis on information recorded at the calf's birth.

Türkiye Yerli Sığır Irklarının Mikrosatellit Belirteçler ile Genetik Karakterizasyonu: Kimliklendirme Çalışmalarında Kullanılabilirliği

“…The PE >0.999 was obtained with 9 [31] and 10 markers [4] , however, the same PE was found in this study by only using 7 (PE-2) and 5 markers (PE-1). Recently SNPs were reported to be efficient marker system parentage testing efforts [32] .…”

“…Due to their high polymorphism and technical ease including suitability for PCR technology and capillary electrophoresis, microsatellites are widely preferred in the paternity testing efforts of various mammalian species [3] . Correct determination of genetic relationships among animal populations has critical importance for development of selection programs [3] , generation of pedigree structures [4] , estimation of heritability [5,6] , and breeding values [7] . Significantly higher rates of paternity misidentification were reported even in the countries where herd records are performed with great care [3,5,8] .…”

Evaluation of 11 microsatellite loci for their use in paternity testing in Yugoslav Pied cattle (YU Simmental cattle)

“…In some developed countries, paternity identification using microsatellite markers is established for their cattle populations (Curi and Lopes, 2002;Radko et al, 2005;Cervini et al, 2006;Řehout et al, 2006;Radko 2008;Tian et al, 2008;Carolino et al, 2009;Ozkan et al, 2009). In addition, microsatellites were used for the analyses of genetic diversity in cattle (Čítek and Řehout, 2001;Grzybowski and Prusak, 2004a,b;Zhou et al, 2005;Czerneková et al, 2006;Čítek et al, 2006;Zaton-Dobrowolska et al, 2007).…”

Allele frequencies of microsatellite loci for genetic characterization of a Sicilian bovine population

“…The N E , which is a function of the expected heterozygosis, showed a strong uneven distribution compared to respective N A values. According to the study by Carolino et al (2009), the N E / N A ratio describes the allelic distribution depending on the number of alleles at a given locus. Therefore, a high ratio indicates a prevalence of many alleles at a given locus.…”

“…Although many of these studies were conducted using European cattle (MacHugh et al, 1998), the Sicilian cattle population has not been studied. Kinship and/or identity analysis for traceability and consanguinity investigations use the allele frequencies of the local population (e.g., Radko et al, 2005;Cervini et al, 2006;Carolino et al, 2009) from a reference database. A reference database did not exist in Sicily until now, and microsatellite analysis has not been performed on Sicilian cattle.…”