Genomic analysis in Bolivian highland Creole cattle revealed selection signatures related to the Andean high-altitude adaptation

ROGBERG MUÑOZ A; ALVAREZ CECCO, P; FALOMIR LOCKHART AH; PEREIRA RICO JA; LOZA VEGA A; ARCE CABRERA ON; FERNANDEZ ME; GIOVAMBATTISTA G

Lleida

Congreso; 37th International Society for Animal Genetics Conference; 2019

International Society for Animal Genetics

Latin-American Creole cattle are direct descendants of the bovinesintroduced into America by the Spanish and Portuguese conquerorsin the 16th century. Currently, Creole cattle are spread all overAmerican countries and became adapted to different environments,evolving under low levels of breeding management, exhibiting a highdegree of resistance to tropical disease and a high level of fertility. Thespread of biospheres includes for example tropical rainforest, subtropicaldry forest and highland steeps. In Bolivia, some Creole populationshad adapted to the Andean highland plains wich are around 4000 maltitude. Those populations had been under those conditions for centuries,adapting to such environments, which could have left signaturesof selection within the actual genomes. The aim of this research was tostudy a population of Bolivian Creole cattle from Andean highland forselective footprints. For this purpose, 67 animals were genotyped usingthe 50K ArBos1 microarray and compared with lowland populations.After genotyping, quality control of raw data was performed, consideringcall rate (?97%) by sample and by SNP. Shape-IT software was usedto determine the haplotypes in all the individuals and rehh package,included in R software, to compute the iHS index within population.The results showed 101 significant SNPs (P ≤ 0.01) among the 29 autosomes.Chromosomes BTA2 and BTA14 showed the highest numberof significant SNPs, while the highest associated peak was detected inBTA17 (P ≤ 1.10?8). Those genomic regions could be related to theadaptation of Creole populations to the over 4,000 m Andean biosphere.Further analysis needs to be done to increase the understanding of cattleadaptation to high-altitude environments.