title: Estimation of genetic parameters and detection of quantitative trait loci for minerals in Danish Holstein and Danish Jersey milk.
abstract: BACKGROUND
  Bovine milk provides important minerals, essential for human nutrition and dairy product quality. For changing the mineral composition of the milk to improve dietary needs in human nutrition and technological properties of milk, a thorough understanding of the genetics underlying milk mineral contents is important. Therefore the aim of this study was to 1) estimate the genetic parameters for individual minerals in Danish Holstein (DH) (n=371) and Danish Jersey (DJ) (n=321) milk, and 2) detect genomic regions associated with mineral content in the milk using a genome-wide association study (GWAS) approach.
  
  
  RESULTS
  For DH, high heritabilities were found for Ca (0.72), Zn (0.49), and P (0.46), while for DJ, high heritabilities were found for Ca (0.63), Zn (0.57), and Mg (0.57). Furthermore, intermediate heritabilities were found for Cu in DH, and for K, Na, P and Se in the DJ. The GWAS revealed a total of 649 significant SNP markers detected for Ca (24), Cu (90), Fe (111), Mn (3), Na (1), P (4), Se (12) and Zn (404) in DH, while for DJ, a total of 787 significant SNP markers were detected for Ca (44), Fe (43), K (498), Na (4), Mg (1), P (94) and Zn (3). Comparing the list of significant markers between DH and DJ revealed that the SNP ARS-BFGL-NGS-4939 was common in both breeds for Zn. This SNP marker is closely linked to the DGAT1 gene. Even though we found significant SNP markers on BTA14 in both DH and DJ for Ca, and Fe these significant SNPs did not overlap.
  
  
  CONCLUSIONS
  The results show that Ca, Zn, P and Mg show high heritabilities. In combination with the GWAS results this opens up possibilities to select for specific minerals in bovine milk.
authors.affiliation: Aarhus University, Center for Quantitative Genetics and Genomics, Department of Molecular Biology and Genetics, Blichers Allé 20, P.O. Box 50, DK-8830, Tjele, Denmark. bart.buitenhuis@mbg.au.dk.
authors.forename: Bart
authors.initials: B
authors.lastname: Buitenhuis
authors.affiliation: Aarhus University, Department of Food Science, Blichers Allé 20, P.O. Box 50, DK-8830, Tjele, Denmark. nina.poulsen@food.au.dk.
authors.forename: Nina A
authors.initials: NA
authors.lastname: Poulsen
authors.affiliation: Aarhus University, Department of Food Science, Blichers Allé 20, P.O. Box 50, DK-8830, Tjele, Denmark. lbl@food.au.dk.
authors.forename: Lotte B
authors.initials: LB
authors.lastname: Larsen
authors.affiliation: Aarhus University, Department of Animal Science, Blichers Allé 20, P.O. Box 50, DK-8830, Tjele, Denmark. Jakob.sehested@anis.au.dk.
authors.forename: Jakob
authors.initials: J
authors.lastname: Sehested
mesh_terms: D000818:Animals; D002118:Calcium; D002417:Cattle; D056726:Genetic Association Studies; D055106:Genome-Wide Association Study; D008274:Magnesium; D008892:Milk / Q000737:chemistry*; D008903:Minerals / Q000737:chemistry*; D020641:Polymorphism, Single Nucleotide; D040641:Quantitative Trait Loci; D019655:Quantitative Trait, Heritable; D015032:Zinc
chemical_list: D008903:Minerals; D008274:Magnesium; D015032:Zinc; D002118:Calcium