New Parentage Testing SNP Panel for Commercial Breeds will be a Useful Tool for Conservation of Creole Sheep

Abstract Text: Accurate and cost-effective DNA-based parentage assignment tools are relevant for genetic improvement and conservation programs. Parentage-testing SNPs selected in commercial sheep breeds were evaluated in Creole sheep in Uruguay using information provided by the 600k SNP chip. Genotyping results indicated a high proportion of fixed and rare SNPs (21.98%; MAF<=0.001), and a relatively low proportion of highly polymorphic SNPs (25.86%; MAF>=0.3). Nevertheless, subsets of 72 and 93 SNPs of the most informative markers for parentage testing, reached probability exclusions of 0.9999 and 0.99999, with average MAF values of 0.43. Comparison of the genotypes of 34 ewe-lamb pairs showed that both subsets of SNPs successfully found correct/incorrect pairs. Although these are preliminary results they show the feasibility of using these SNPs for parentage verification in Creole sheep. This will help to correctly record the genealogy of the population in the future conservation plan.

Keywords:

Creole sheep

Parentage testing

Validation