The genetics of phenotypic plasticity in livestock in the era of climate change: a review

Abstract

Climate change has the potential to adversely affect the health of livestock, with consequences to animal welfare, greenhouse gas emissions, productivity, human health and livelihoods. Phenotypic plasticity is the ability of a genotype to produce different phenotypes, depending on environmental, biotic or abiotic conditions; it is a factor influencing and modifying the genes of animal and plant organisms, to adaptation to climate change. Among the various climate variables, heat stress has been reported to be the most detrimental factor to the economy of the livestock industry. There are a number of candidate genes that are associated with adaptation of ruminants, monogastric and poultry to heat stress. For instance, the genes encoding leptin, thyroid hormone receptor, insulin growth factor-1, growth hormone receptor, are associated with the impacts of heat stress on the physiological pathways of domestic animals such as dairy cows, beef cattle, buffaloes, poultry, pigs and horses. This review aims to highlight genes and traits that are involved with thermo-tolerance of domestic animals to sustain production and to cope with climate change. Selection and experimental evolution approaches have shown that plasticity is a trait that can evolve when under direct selection and has a correlated response to some specific traits. Therefore, new breeding goals should be defined for the potential of livestock species to acquire plasticity for adaptation to the current climate changing conditions. HIGHLIGHTS Heat stress compromises feed intake, growth, milk and meat quality and quantity, resulting in a significant financial burden to global livestock. Genetic selection and nutritional intervention are key strategies to consider in Animal Genetic Resources in hot environments. Information from gene expression or genome-wide association studies can be used to further improve the accuracy of selection.

Evolution of inbreeding: a gaze into five Italian beef cattle breeds history

“…The current selection program, based on the traditional quantitative approach, has achieved a remarkable improvement of growth, daily weight and muscularity gain (Sbarra, 2011). Moreover, cattle are somatically well-developed with a correct morphology and light skeletal system (Rovelli et al, 2020a). However, the intensity of the selection in the five breeds is lower in the rustic MRM and POD than in the three specialised ones; moreover, the two rustic breeds register a low amount of young bulls/year in performance test (Fioretti et al, 2020).…”

Heat shock protein (HSP) release mechanism under heat stress pressure in Goats: a review

“…Then, facilitating the formation of new proteins within the cell. The newly synthesised HSP also repairing and refolding damaged proteins when heat stress occured [21].…”

Emerging Genetic Tools to Investigate Molecular Pathways Related to Heat Stress in Chickens: A Review

“…Climate change means spatial and temporal variations in the environmental climatic parameters on Earth [ 20 ]. These climatic parameters include temperature; humidity; solar radiation; precipitation; and the temperature of water, which causes glaciers to melt [ 21 ]. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change’s Fifth Assessment Report shed light on a future temperature increase in the Earth’s surface ranging from 0.3 to 4.8 °C by 2100 [ 22 ]; this may affect livestock through variations in feed crops and forage, biodiversity, animal welfare, productive, and reproductive traits.…”