TITLE:
A Genome Wide Association Study for Longevity in Cattle
AUTHORS:
Gábor Mészáros, Sophie Eaglen, Patrik Waldmann, Johann Sölkner
KEYWORDS:
Genome Wide Association; Longevity; False Discovery Rate; Population Structure; Cattle
JOURNAL NAME:
Open Journal of Genetics,
Vol.4 No.1,
March
5,
2014
ABSTRACT: Longevity is regarded as the most important functional
trait in cattle breeding with high economic value yet low heritability. In
order to identify genomic regions associated with longevity, a genome wise
association study was performed using data from 4887 Fleckvieh bulls and 33,556
SNPs after quality control. Single SNP regression was used for identification
of important SNPs including eigenvectors as a means of
correction for population structure. SNPs selected with a false discovery rate
threshold of 0.05 and with local false discovery rate identified genomic
regions associated with longevity which were subsequently cross checked with
the National Center for Biotechnology Information (NCBI) database. This, to
identify interesting genes in cattle and their homologue forms in other
species. The most notable genes were SYT10 located on chromosome 5, ADAMTS3 on
chromosome 6, NTRK2 on chromosome 8 and SNTG1 on chromosome 14 of the cattle
genome. Several of the genes found have previously been associated with cattle
fertility. Poor fertility is an important culling reason and thereby affects longevity
in cattle. Several signals were located in regions sparse with described genes,
which suggest that there might be several other non-identified genetic pathways for this important trait.