Depauperate genetic variability detected in the American and European bison using genomic techniques

• Author(s) / Creator(s)

  • Tokarska, M.
  • Demontis, D.
  • Wójcik, J.M.
  • Gregersen, V.R.
  • Loeschcke, V.
  • Pertoldi, C.
  • Coltman, D.

• A total of 929 polymorphic SNPs in EB (out of 54, 000 SNPs screened using a BovineSNP50 Illumina Genotyping BeadChip), and 1, 524 and 1, 403 polymorphic SNPs in WB and PB, respectively, were analysed. EB, WB and PB have all undergone recent drastic reductions in population size. Accordingly, they exhibited extremely depauperate genomes, deviations from genetic equilibrium and a genome organization consisting of a mosaic of haplotype blocks: regions with low haplotype diversity and high levels of linkage disequilibrium. No evidence for positive or stabilizing selection was found in EB, WB and PB, likely reflecting drift overwhelming selection. We suggest that utilization of genome-wide screening technologies, followed by utilization of less expensive techniques (e.g. VeraCode and Fluidigm EP1), holds large potential for genetic monitoring of populations. Additionally, these techniques will allow radical improvements of breeding practices in captive or managed populations, otherwise hampered by the limited availability of polymorphic markers. This result in improved possibilities for 1) estimating genetic relationships among individuals and 2) designing breeding strategies which attempt to preserve or reduce polymorphism in ecologically relevant genes and/or entire blocks.

• Date created

  2009

• Subjects / Keywords

  • Plains bison
  • Variance
  • Linkage disequilibrium
  • Effective population-size

• Type of Item

  Article (Published)

• DOI

  https://doi.org/10.7939/R3K35MQ8S

• License

  © 2009 Pertoldi et al; licensee BioMed Central Ltd. This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.