Developing haplotype-based tools derived from high-density SNP enotypes to study the genomic and phylogenetic structure of a diverse set of cattle breeds

http://www.fugato-forschung.de/genotrack.html

During the last decay, the use of molecular genetics has had a major impact on evolutionary studies. In the case of cattle, these reports suggest two different scenarios and origins for domestication of Taurine (in Anatolia-Turkey) and Indicus (in Pakistan) cattle. The most of these studies are based on mitochondrial sequences data. Recently, rapid increase in newly identified Nuclear DNA markers (mainly SNPs, single nucleotide polymorphisms) and continuous decline in genotyping cost have opened new perspectives for diversity studies and reconstruction of the events surrounding cattle domestication.
In the cooperative research project GenoTrack funded by the Fugato-plus program of the German Ministery of Research, about 25 DNA samples from 25 different cattle breeds would be taken. Assuming the possible migration route of Taurine cattle from Middle East to Europe, we would have samples from Iran, Turkey and Greece as well as different regions of the Europe and will genotype the genome by around 54000 (60k Illumina chip) DNA markers. This will be done for all breeds and for defined subsets of breeds (like dairy vs. beef; bos taurus vs. bos indicus). A broad range of diversity characteristics such as allele frequencies, heterozygosities, genetic distances and any evidences of natural or man-made selection based on Linkage disequilibrium methods (continental tracts of the chromosomes and selective sweeps) would be measured and compared.