Genomic regions associated with fertility traits in male and female cattle: advances from microsatellites to high-density chips and beyond.
A current challenge in genetic improvement of cattle is to identify genomic selection strategies that could work across breeds. Breed differences, scarcity of data, and lack of quantitative trait loci (QTL) validation contribute to this challenge. We conducted a review of the literature to identify QTL, markers, and candidate genes that are associated with fertility across breeds to arrive at an integrated view of bovine fertility genomics and to guide the direction of future studies. This review considers both male and female fertility traits as these are economically relevant for all breeds and production systems. Regions associated with fertility traits were found in each of the 30 bovine chromosomes, confirming the complexity of these polygenic traits. Across breeds, regions on chromosomes 1, 5, 14, and 16 were associated with female reproductive traits. The X chromosome was associated with male reproductive traits in both dairy and beef bulls. It has recently been proposed that a Y chromosome anomaly may be involved in infertility in cows. Knowledge of these QTL may assist discovery of causative mutations and has the potential to improve the accuracy of genomic selection, especially across breeds of cattle.
The University of Queensland, Centre for Animal Science, Queensland Alliance for Agriculture and Food Innovation, Gatton, QLD 4343, Australia. m.fortes@uq.edu.au
Marina R S
MR
Fortes
Kasey L
KL
Deatley
Sigrid A
SA
Lehnert
Brian M
BM
Burns
Antonio
A
Reverter
Rachel J
RJ
Hawken
Gry
G
Boe-Hansen
Stephen S
SS
Moore
Milton G
MG
Thomas
D000818:Animals; D002417:Cattle / Q000235:genetics* / Q000502:physiology*; D005260:Female; D005298:Fertility / Q000235:genetics* / Q000502:physiology; D008297:Male; D046208:Microchip Analytical Procedures / Q000662:veterinary*; D018895:Microsatellite Repeats
Bovine; Genetic markers; Quantitative trait loci; Reproductive traits; Sex chromosomes