Mitochondrial DNA diversity of the Sardinian local cattle stock

Abstract

The aim of this research was to characterize the genetic diversity of the Sarda (Sa, n = 131), Sardo Bruna (SB, n = 44) and Sardo Modicana (SM, n = 26) cattle breeds, reared in the island of Sardinia (Italy). A portion of the mitochondrial DNA hypervariable region was sequenced, in order to identify a potential signature of African introgression. The FST coefficients among populations ranged between 0.056 for Sa vs SB and 0.167 for SB vs SM. AMOVA analysis indicated there was a significant differentiation of the three breeds, although most of diversity was gathered at the within-breed level. The Median Joining Network of the Sardinian sequences showed a potential founder effect signature. A MJ network including Sardinian cattle plus African, Italian, Iberian and Asian sequences, revealed the presence of haplogroup T3, already detected in Sa cattle, and the presence of Hg T1 and Hg T1′2′3, in Sa and SB. The presence of a private haplotype belonging to haplogroup T1, which is characteristic of African taurine breeds, may be due to the introgression of Sardinian breeds with African cattle, either directly (most probable source: North African cattle) or indirectly (through a Mediterranean intermediary already introgressed with African blood).

​Elucidation of Genetic Divergence among Cattle Breeds of Tamil Nadu in Mitochondrial Genome

“…All the15 sequences of five cattle breeds were categorised into 15 different haplotypes with haplotype diversity (HD) of 1.0 indicating high degree of haplotype diversity. Haplotype diversity of the present study was more than that reported by Chung (2013) in Korean cattle (0.052 to 0.20) and Petretto et al (2022) in Sardinian local cattle stock (0.879). The genetic differences were observed between populations of the same breed, indicating that the identified haplotypes may be used to characterize group specificities of each cattle breed (bulls, moderate yielders, low yielders).…”

Maternal genetic diversity analysis of Guanling cattle by mitochondrial genome sequencing

“…Bovine mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA) has been widely used to evaluate the origin, phylogeny, genetic diversity, and population structure of this species as it has the characteristics of maternal inheritance, lack of recombination events, and high mutation rate [3][4][5]. Previously, the Cytb gene and the D-loop region of mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA) have been studied to assess the genetic diversity and phylogenetic performance of Guizhou Yellow cattle [6,7].…”