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Scrapie is a fatal neurodegenerative disorder of sheep and goats caused by post-translational conformational change in the host-encoded prion protein (PrPC). Susceptibility or resistance to scrapie has been associated with the presence of polymorphisms in the prion protein (PrP) gene. In the present study, we analyzed the PrP gene sequence to determine the frequency of polymorphisms in 56 sheep (28 each from Damani and Hashtnagri breeds) and 56 goats (28 each from Kamori and Local Hairy breeds). A total of 7 amino acid polymorphisms were detected in the PrP gene for sheep and 4 for goats. These amino acid polymorphisms were combined in 13 alleles and 15 genotypes in sheep and 5 alleles and 6 genotypes in goats. The overall frequency of the most sheep scrapie-resistant polymorphism (Q171R) was calculated to be 0.107. The most scrapie-susceptible polymorphism (A136V) was not detected in any of the studied sheep. The overall frequency of scrapie-associated polymorphism (H143R) in goats was found to be 0.152. Along with already known amino acid polymorphisms, two novel polymorphisms were also detected for each of sheep (Q171N and T191I) and goats (G22C and P63L). However, the overall frequency of these polymorphisms was extremely low.

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