Positional Candidate Cloning of a QTL in Dairy Cattle: Identification of a Missense Mutation in the Bovine DGAT1 Gene with Major Effect on Milk Yield and Composition

  1. Bernard Grisart1,
  2. Wouter Coppieters1,
  3. Frédéric Farnir1,
  4. Latifa Karim1,
  5. Christine Ford2,
  6. Paulette Berzi1,
  7. Nadine Cambisano1,
  8. Myriam Mni1,
  9. Suzanne Reid2,
  10. Patricia Simon1,
  11. Richard Spelman3,
  12. Michel Georges1,4, and
  13. Russell Snell2
  1. 1Department of Genetics, Faculty of Veterinary Medicine, University of Liège (B43), 4000-Liège, Belgium; 2ViaLactia Biosciences (NZ) Ltd., University of Auckland Medical School, Auckland, New Zealand; 3Livestock Improvement Corp., Hamilton, New Zealand

Abstract

We recently mapped a quantitative trait locus (QTL) with a major effect on milk composition—particularly fat content—to the centromeric end of bovine chromosome 14. We subsequently exploited linkage disequilibrium to refine the map position of this QTL to a 3-cM chromosome interval bounded by microsatellite markers BULGE13and BULGE09. We herein report the positional candidate cloning of this QTL, involving (1) the construction of a BAC contig spanning the corresponding marker interval, (2) the demonstration that a very strong candidate gene, acylCoA:diacylglycerol acyltransferase (DGAT1), maps to that contig, and (3) the identification of a nonconservative K232A substitution in the DGAT1 gene with a major effect on milk fat content and other milk characteristics.

[The sequence data described in this paper have been submitted to the GenBank data library under accession number AY065621.]

Footnotes

  • 4 Corresponding author.

  • E-MAIL michel.georges{at}ulg.ac.be; FAX 32-4-366-4122.

  • Article and publication are at http://www.genome.org/cgi/doi/10.1101/gr.224202.

    • Received November 16, 2001.
    • Accepted December 4, 2001.
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