Investigation of the genetic distances of bovids and cervids using BovineSNP50k BeadChip

Abstract. This study presents the application of BovineSNP50 BeadChip for genome-wide screening of two taurine breeds (Bos primigenius taurus) and Zebu (Bos primigenius indicus), and two species from the family Cervidae: red deer (Cervus elaphus) and fallow deer (Dama dama). The aim of the paper was to evaluate the use of bovine array for cross-species genotyping and analyse single nucleotide polymorphism (SNP) distribution, diversity within groups of animals and genetic distance among analysed species. The number of polymorphic SNPs decreased with the increase of phylogenetic distance between species, which also reflected a decrease in call rate (from 99.54 to 61.19%). The minor allele frequency (MAF) values were significantly different between species and ranged from 0.18 ± 15 (Zebu) to 0.26 ± 0.14 (Pinzgau). The subsequent analyses of genetic diversity were based on the polymorphic loci detected in cervids. Differences in the expected heterozygosity was low (0.06), on average 0.34. In analysed groups the F_IS values were close to zero, which suggested low SNP variance within them. The value of F_IT indicated homozygote excess in evaluated individuals. Analysis of molecular variance revealed that most of the variability was distributed within all individuals. Observed genetic distances within and across groups of animals suggested that taurine cattle and cervids were more distant. The study results showed that genotyping array prepared for model species can be applied not only to organisms for which was developed, but can be also successfully used in closely related and more phylogenetically divergent species.