Detection of signatures of selection in Australian beef cattle

Abstract

<p>The 50K genotypes of 2,935 animals from the 5 most common temperate beef breeds in Australia were used to identify genomic footprints of selection based on fixation index (FST). A principal component analysis on genomic relationships between all individuals showed that Angus, Hereford and Wagyu are the most genetically differentiated breeds. Therefore, 3 pairwise FST comparisons were implemented between Angus vs. Wagyu, Angus vs. Hereford and Hereford vs. Wagyu. Genome-wide comparison of patterns of the FST values revealed 14 candidate regions under selection on chromosomes 2:6, 8, 12, 13, 20, and 24. Several of the identified candidate regions in this study have been previously reported for different economically important traits in beef cattle. In addition, our identified candidate regions for signatures of selection harboured genes in several enriched annotation clusters. If validated, the results from this study can be incorporated in genomic selection of the Australian beef cattle population.</p>