A genome-wide survey reveals a deletion polymorphism associated with resistance to gastrointestinal nematodes in Angus cattle

Funct Integr Genomics. 2014 Jun;14(2):333-9. doi: 10.1007/s10142-014-0371-6. Epub 2014 Apr 10.

Abstract

Gastrointestinal (GI) nematode infections are a worldwide threat to human health and animal production. In this study, we performed a genome-wide association study between copy number variations (CNVs) and resistance to GI nematodes in an Angus cattle population. Using a linear regression analysis, we identified one deletion CNV which reaches genome-wide significance after Bonferroni correction. With multiple mapped human olfactory receptor genes but no annotated bovine genes in the region, this significantly associated CNV displays high population frequencies (58.26 %) with a length of 104.8 kb on chr7. We further investigated the linkage disequilibrium (LD) relationships between this CNV and its nearby single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) and genes. The underlining haplotype blocks contain immune-related genes such as ZNF496 and NLRP3. As this CNV co-segregates with linked SNPs and associated genes, we suspect that it could contribute to the detected variations in gene expression and thus differences in host parasite resistance.

Publication types

  • Research Support, U.S. Gov't, Non-P.H.S.

MeSH terms

  • Animals
  • Base Sequence*
  • Cattle
  • Cattle Diseases / genetics*
  • Cattle Diseases / immunology
  • Chromosome Mapping
  • DNA Copy Number Variations*
  • Disease Resistance / genetics
  • Female
  • Gastrointestinal Tract / immunology
  • Gastrointestinal Tract / parasitology
  • Genome*
  • Genome-Wide Association Study
  • Haplotypes
  • Humans
  • Linkage Disequilibrium
  • Male
  • Molecular Sequence Data
  • Nematoda / physiology
  • Nematode Infections / genetics*
  • Nematode Infections / immunology
  • Nematode Infections / veterinary*
  • Sequence Deletion*