Conservation status and historical relatedness of Italian cattle breeds

• DOI: 10.1186/s12711-018-0406-x
• Publication Date: 2018-06-25T21:40:10Z
• Authors: Salvatore Mastran...; Elena Ciani; Paolo Ajmone Marsan; Alessandro Bagnato; Luca Battaglini; Riccardo Bozzi; Antonello Carta; Gennaro Catillo; Martino Cassandro; Sara Casu; Roberta Ciampolini; Paola Crepaldi; Mariasilvia D’Andrea; Rosalia Di Gerlando; Luca Fontanesi; Maria Longeri; Nicolò P. Macciotta; Roberto Mantovani; Donata Marletta; Donato Matassino; Marcello Mele; Giulio Pagnacco; Camillo Pieramati; Baldassare Portolano; Francesca M. Sarti; Marco Tolone; Fabio Pilla
• Keywords: Runs of Homozygosity; Pedigree chart; Effective population size

In the last 50 years, diversity of cattle breeds has experienced a severe contraction. However, in spite growing diffusion cosmopolite specialized breeds, several local are still farmed Italy. Genetic characterization represents an essential step to guide decisions management farm animal genetic resources. The aim this work was provide high-resolution representation genome-wide and population structure Italian using medium-density single nucleotide polymorphism (SNP) array.After quality control filtering, dataset included 31,013 SNPs for 800 samples from 32 breeds. Our results on these agree largely with their recorded history. We observed low level diversity, which together small size effective populations, confirmed that threatened extinction. According analysis runs homozygosity, evidence recent inbreeding strong some such as Garfagnina, Mucca Pisana Pontremolese. Patterns differentiation, shared ancestry, admixture events, phylogenetic tree, all suggest presence gene flow, particular among originate same geographical area, Sicilian complex events most have experienced, they preserved distinctive characteristics can be clearly discriminated, is probably due differences origin, environment, isolation inbreeding.This study first exhaustive significant importance because will help design implement conservation strategies. Indeed, efforts maintain needed. Improvement systems record monitor may contribute situ and, view this, availability genomic data fundamental resource.