Identification of Signatures of Selection in Bos Taurus Beef and Dairy Cattle Using Genome-wide SNP Genotypes

Abstract

The objectives of this study were to identify signatures of selection in Bos taurus beef and dairy cattle populations and to annotate regions of selection with gene, function and QTL information. Differences in minor allele frequencies, population-average FST, population-specific FST, and integrated extended haplotype homozygosity scores were applied to a subset of the bovine HapMap data to characterize signatures of selection in 7 Bos taurus beef and 5 Bos taurus dairy cattle populations. Numerous single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNP) exhibited evidence of selection across the genome and regions of BTA2 and BTA14 that are considered to be under positive selection in beef and dairy cattle, respectively, were highlighted. The current density of SNP limited our ability to annotate regions putatively under selection because most SNP in the assay were intergenic. This is likely because of the betweenbreed SNP discovery method that was used, which typically identifies SNP with higher allele frequencies.