A genome-wide association study of tick burden and milk composition in cattle

Lex B. Turner; Blair E. Harrison; Rowan J. Bunch; Laercio R. Porto Neto; Yutao Li; William Barendse

doi:10.1071/AN09135

RESEARCH ARTICLE (Open Access)

A genome-wide association study of tick burden and milk composition in cattle

Lex B. Turner ^A , Blair E. Harrison ^B , Rowan J. Bunch ^B , Laercio R. Porto Neto ^B , Yutao Li ^B and William Barendse ^B ^C

+ Author Affiliations

- Author Affiliations

^A Queensland Department of Primary Industries and Fisheries, Mutdapilly Research Station, MS 825 Peak Crossing, Qld 4306, Australia.

^B CSIRO Livestock Industries, 306 Carmody Road, St Lucia, Qld 4067, Australia.

^C Corresponding author. Email: bill.barendse@csiro.au

Animal Production Science 50(4) 235-245 https://doi.org/10.1071/AN09135
Submitted: 8 October 2009 Accepted: 10 March 2010 Published: 12 May 2010

Abstract

To study the genetic basis of tick burden and milk production and their interrelationship, we collected a sample of 1961 cattle with multiple tick counts from northern Australia of which 973 had dairy production data in the Australian Dairy Herd Information Service database. We calculated heritabilities, genetic and phenotypic correlations for these traits and showed a negative relationship between tick counts and milk and milk component yield. Tests of polymorphisms of four genes associated with milk yield, ABCG2, DGAT1, GHR and PRLR, showed no statistically significant effect on tick burden but highly significant associations to milk component yield in these data and we confirmed separate effects for GHR and PRLR on bovine chromosome 20. To begin to identify some of the molecular genetic bases for these traits, we genotyped a sample of 189 of these cattle for 7397 single nucleotide polymorphisms in a genome-wide association study. Although the allele effects for adjusted milk fat and protein yield were highly correlated (r = 0.66), the correlations of allele effects of these milk component yields and tick burden were small (|r| ≤ 0.10). These results agree in general with the phenotypic correlations between tick counts and milk component yield and suggest that selection on markers for tick burden or milk component yield may have no undesirable effect on the other trait.

Acknowledgements

This paper is dedicated to the memory of the late D. W. Kemp, with whom this work was planned. We thank G. Hetherington for help with the Australian Dairy Herd Improvement Scheme (ADHIS) database and M. B. Thomas for help with plating DNA samples. J. W. Kijas and M. Mariasegaram commented on the draft manuscript and two anonymous reviewers provided comments that improved the text and analysis. LRPN was supported in his doctoral work by an Endeavour International Postgraduate Research Scholarship, a University of Queensland International Student Living Allowance and a Beef CRC top-up scholarship. WB was partly supported by Dairy Australia under the grant CSLI10805.

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