Gebreselase Haile Berihulay, Nigussie Hailemichael, Wang Changfa, Luo Chenglong
State Key Laboratory of Swine and Poultry Breeding Industry Guangdong Key Laboratory of Animal Breeding and Nutrition Institute of Animal Science, Guangdong Academy of Agricultural Sciences, Guangzhou 510640, China.
Department of Biotechnology, College of Natural and Computational Science, Aksum University, Aksum 1010, Tigray, Ethiopia.
Animals (Basel). 2024 Jan 18;14(2):307. doi: 10.3390/ani14020307.
Goats belong to a group of animals called small ruminants and are critical sources of livelihood for rural people. Genomic sequencing can provide information ranging from basic knowledge about goat diversity and evolutionary processes that shape genomes to functional information about genes/genomic regions. In this study, we exploited a whole-genome sequencing data set to analyze the genetic diversity, population structure and selection signatures of 44 individuals belonging to 5 Ethiopian goat populations: 12 Aberegalle (AB), 5 Afar (AF), 11 Begait (BG), 12 Central highlands (CH) and 5 Meafure (MR) goats. Our results revealed the highest genetic diversity in the BG goat population compared to the other goat populations. The pairwise genetic differentiation (F) among the populations varied and ranged from 0.011 to 0.182, with the closest pairwise value (0.003) observed between the AB and CH goats and a distant correlation ( = 0.182) between the BG and AB goats, indicating low to moderate genetic differentiation. Phylogenetic tree, ADMIXTURE and principal component analyses revealed a classification of the five Ethiopian goat breeds in accordance with their geographic distribution. We also found three top genomic regions that were detected under selection on chromosomes 2, 5 and 13. Moreover, this study identified different candidate genes related to milk characteristics (GLYCAM1 and ), carcass (, , , , and ) and adaptive and immune response genes , , , , and ). In conclusion, this information could be helpful for understanding the genetic diversity and population structure and selection scanning of these important indigenous goats for future genetic improvement and/or as an intervention mechanism.
山羊属于一类被称为小型反刍动物的动物，是农村人口重要的生计来源。基因组测序可以提供从关于山羊多样性和塑造基因组的进化过程的基础知识到基因/基因组区域的功能信息等一系列信息。在本研究中，我们利用一个全基因组测序数据集，分析了属于5个埃塞俄比亚山羊群体的44个个体的遗传多样性、群体结构和选择印记：12只阿贝雷加勒（AB）山羊、5只阿法尔（AF）山羊、11只贝加伊特（BG）山羊、12只中部高地（CH）山羊和5只梅阿富雷（MR）山羊。我们的结果显示，与其他山羊群体相比，BG山羊群体的遗传多样性最高。群体之间的成对遗传分化（F）各不相同，范围从0.011到0.182，AB和CH山羊之间观察到最接近的成对值（0.003），BG和AB山羊之间的相关性较远（F = 0.182），表明遗传分化程度较低到中等。系统发育树、ADMIXTURE分析和主成分分析揭示了这五个埃塞俄比亚山羊品种根据其地理分布的分类。我们还发现了在2号、5号和13号染色体上检测到的三个顶级基因组区域受到选择。此外，本研究确定了与产奶特性（GLYCAM1等）、胴体（相关基因）以及适应性和免疫反应基因（相关基因）有关的不同候选基因。总之，这些信息有助于理解这些重要本土山羊的遗传多样性、群体结构和选择扫描情况，以便未来进行遗传改良和/或作为一种干预机制。
