Analysis of Haplotype Structure in the Bovine Major Histocompatibility Complex

Abstract

The goal of this project was to identify and characterize polymorphic markers spanning regions of the bovine major histocompatibility complex (BoLA) to analyze patterns of genetic variation and haplotype structure across diverse cattle breeds with various breed histories and selection pressures. Genetic markers that demonstrated sufficient levels of polymorphism, locus specificity, Mendelian inheritance, and the accurate typing of alleles across diverse haplotypes were chosen to define separate haplotype structures for the BoLA IIb and BoLA IIa-III-I regions and to evaluate breakpoints in linkage disequilibrium within the regions surrounding BoLA IIa-III-I. A total of 23 microsatellites, two SNPSTRs, 62 SNPs, and the alleles of three class IIa genes were selected for use in this study. These markers revealed eleven recombination events, low levels of recombination in BoLA IIa-III-I, a sharp break in haplotype structure in the region centromeric to class IIa, prolonged linkage disequilibrium in the extended class I region, strong conservation of BoLA IIa-III-I haplotype structure, BoLA IIa-III-I homozygous haplotype identity across seven different breeds of cattle, and a small number of common BoLA IIa-III-I haplotypes within the Angus and Holstein breeds. This work demonstrated that 52 SNPs from the Illumina 50K SNPchip could accurately predict BoLA IIa-III-I haplotypes. These 52 SNPs represent tagSNPs that can predict BoLA IIa-III-I genetic variation and could offer a cost-effective means for screening large sample sizes for haplotype/disease association studies in the future.