Assessment of genetic drift and migration in six cattle breeds

Abstract

Slovak Spotted cattle represents an endangered breed with cultural importance in Slovakia. The study was based on the panel of 34,604 SNPs that were used for genotyping of 451 individuals. We used a combination of two arrays Illumina BovineSNP50v2 BeadChip and ICBF International Dairy and Beef v3, for estimation of gene flow and genetic drift. Based on the admixture results, a gene flow network across the analysed breeds was created. Our result showed that the Jersey population was involved in the grading-up of the analysed breeds. Analysed breeds were not confirmed to influence genetic make-up of Jersey. In addition, the phylogenetic analysis of the six cattle breeds revealed that Jersey is separated from the others. In contrast, the other breeds showed a close relationship with each other according to the maximum-likelihood tree. Migration edges reached weight values below 0.2, apart the one observed among the Ayrshire/Swiss Simmental breeds into Jersey (0.4), reflecting that the donor population has made a significant contribution to the recipient population.