Journal article
Mutant alleles differentially shape fitness and other complex traits in cattle
R Xiang, EJ Breen, S Bolormaa, CJV Jagt, AJ Chamberlain, IM Macleod, ME Goddard
Communications Biology | Published : 2021
Abstract
Mutant alleles (MAs) that have been classically recognised have large effects on phenotype and tend to be deleterious to traits and fitness. Is this the case for mutations with small effects? We infer MAs for 8 million sequence variants in 113k cattle and quantify the effects of MA on 37 complex traits. Heterozygosity for variants at genomic sites conserved across 100 vertebrate species increase fertility, stature, and milk production, positively associating these traits with fitness. MAs decrease stature and fat and protein concentration in milk, but increase gestation length and somatic cell count in milk (the latter indicative of mastitis). However, the frequency of MAs decreasing stature..
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Awarded by Australian Research Council
Funding Acknowledgements
Australian Research Council's Discovery Projects (DP160101056 and DP200100499) supported R.X. and M.E.G. DairyBio, a joint venture project between Agriculture Victoria (Melbourne, Australia), Dairy Australia (Melbourne, Australia) and the Gardiner Foundation (Melbourne, Australia), funded computing resources used in the analysis. The authors also thank the University of Melbourne, Australia for supporting this research. No funding bodies participated in the design of the study nor analysis or interpretation of data nor writing of the manuscript. DataGene provided access to the reference data used in this study and the 1000 Bull Genomes consortium provided access to cattle sequence data. We thank Gert Nieuwhof and Kon Konstantinov (DataGene) for the preparation and provision of data. We thank Professor Hans D. Daetwyler for assisting with the access to the 1000 Bull Genomes data. We thank Professor Naomi Wray for a critical read of the manuscript.