The

genome In the fields of molecular biology and genetics, a genome is all the genetic information of an organism. It consists of nucleotide sequences of DNA (or RNA in RNA viruses). The nuclear genome includes protein-coding genes and non-coding ...

of a female Hereford cow was published in 2009. It was sequenced by the Bovine Genome Sequencing and Analysis Consortium, a team of researchers led by the

National Institutes of Health The National Institutes of Health, commonly referred to as NIH (with each letter pronounced individually), is the primary agency of the United States government responsible for biomedical and public health research. It was founded in the lat ...

and the

U.S. Department of Agriculture The United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) is the federal executive department responsible for developing and executing federal laws related to farming, forestry, rural economic development, and food. It aims to meet the needs of comme ...

. It was part of an effort to improve

livestock Livestock are the domesticated animals raised in an agricultural setting to provide labor and produce diversified products for consumption such as meat, eggs, milk, fur, leather, and wool. The term is sometimes used to refer solely to ani ...

breeding Breeding is sexual reproduction that produces offspring, usually animals or plants. It can only occur between a male and a female animal or plant. Breeding may refer to: * Animal husbandry, through selected specimens such as dogs, horses, and r ...

and at the time was one of the largest genomes ever sequenced.

Genome

The size of the bovine

is 3 Gb (3 billion

base pair A base pair (bp) is a fundamental unit of double-stranded nucleic acids consisting of two nucleobases bound to each other by hydrogen bonds. They form the building blocks of the DNA double helix and contribute to the folded structure of both D ...

s). It contains approximately 22,000

gene In biology, the word gene (from , ; "...Wilhelm Johannsen coined the word gene to describe the Mendelian units of heredity..." meaning ''generation'' or ''birth'' or ''gender'') can have several different meanings. The Mendelian gene is a b ...

s of which 14,000 are common to all

mammalian Mammals () are a group of vertebrate animals constituting the class Mammalia (), characterized by the presence of mammary glands which in females produce milk for feeding (nursing) their young, a neocortex (a region of the brain), fu ...

species.

Bovine Bovines (subfamily Bovinae) comprise a diverse group of 10 genera of medium to large-sized ungulates, including cattle, bison, African buffalo, water buffalos, and the four-horned and spiral-horned antelopes. The evolutionary relationship betwe ...

s share 80 percent of their genes with humans;

cows Cattle (''Bos taurus'') are large, domesticated, cloven-hooved, herbivores. They are a prominent modern member of the subfamily Bovinae and the most widespread species of the genus ''Bos''. Adult females are referred to as cows and adult mal ...

are less similar to humans than rodents (humans and rodents belong to the clade of Supraprimates) and dogs (humans and dogs belong to the clade of

Boreoeutheria Boreoeutheria (, "northern true beasts") is a magnorder of placental mammals that groups together superorders Euarchontoglires and Laurasiatheria. With a few exceptionsExceptional clades whose males lack the usual boreoeutherian scrotum are mo ...

). They also have about 1,000 genes shared with dogs and

rodent Rodents (from Latin , 'to gnaw') are mammals of the order Rodentia (), which are characterized by a single pair of continuously growing incisors in each of the upper and lower jaws. About 40% of all mammal species are rodents. They are n ...

s but not identified in humans. The charting of key DNA differences, also known as

haplotype A haplotype ( haploid genotype) is a group of alleles in an organism that are inherited together from a single parent. Many organisms contain genetic material ( DNA) which is inherited from two parents. Normally these organisms have their DNA o ...

s, between several varieties of cattle could allow scientists to understand what is the role of some genes coding for products of economic value (milk, meat, leather). It opens new perspectives for enhancing

selective breeding Selective breeding (also called artificial selection) is the process by which humans use animal breeding and plant breeding to selectively develop particular phenotypic traits (characteristics) by choosing which typically animal or plant ...

and changing certain cattle characteristics for the benefit of farmers.

Team

The Bovine Genome Sequencing and Analysis Consortium worked to sequence the genome over a six-year period, and included 300 scientists across 25 countries led by the U.S. NIH and the

USDA The United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) is the federal executive department responsible for developing and executing federal laws related to farming, forestry, rural economic development, and food. It aims to meet the needs of comme ...

References

External links

Science Magazine, 24 April 2009, Vol 324, Issue 5926, Pages 435-537.

Science Podcast, 04/24/09

{{Webarchive, url=https://web.archive.org/web/20131220081850/http://genomebiology.com/content/pdf/gb-2009-10-4-r42.pdf , date=2013-12-20

*View th
cow genome
on

Ensembl Ensembl genome database project is a scientific project at the European Bioinformatics Institute, which provides a centralized resource for geneticists, molecular biologists and other researchers studying the genomes of our own species and other v ...

Hereford cattle Genome projects

Genome

Team

See also

References

External links