Stature study ups our profile

Agriculture Victoria scientists have attracted global attention for world-leading work in cattle genetics, with the recent publication of a paper in the prestigious journal Nature Genetics showing that tall cows have a lot in common with tall people.

The paper, titled Metaanalysis of genome-wide association studies for cattle stature identifies common genes that regulate body size in mammals, is the world’s largest-scale study into the genetic basis for body size in cattle.

The research has revealed that body stature in cattle is controlled by thousands of genes, and that some of the key genes are the same as those that control height in humans.

Agriculture Victoria researcher Hans Daetwyler said the finding was significant in extending understanding of the bovine genome.

‘‘In Australia, we already have a system in place for sophisticated cattle genetics,’’ Dr Daetwyler said.

‘‘In recent years, we have improved the reliability of breeding values for dairy cattle, and implemented complex traits including fertility and heat tolerance.

‘‘Height is a well-studied and complex trait in genetics. However, this research is the largestscale study to investigate the genetic basis for height, or body stature, in cattle.’’

The research was undertaken as part of the 1000 Bull Genomes Consortium project — an international collaboration of 36 partner institutions that has sequenced 2700 entire bull genomes since 2012, including key ancestors of the Australian dairy herd.

Scientists undertook metaanalysis for stature using more than 58 000 cattle from 17 dairy and beef populations, with 25.4 million imputed whole genome sequence variants.

Agriculture Victoria scientists at the AgriBio Centre for AgriBioscience in Bundoora, Victoria, substantially contributed to the analysis, using AgriBio’s next generation sequencing and advanced scientific computing capabilities.

The paper was published in Nature Genetics and can be found at: http://go.nature.com/ 2C9odPM