Expression profiles of genes regulating dairy cow fertility: recent findings, ongoing activities and future possibilities

Abstract

Subfertility has negative effects for dairy farm profitability, animal welfare and sustainability of animal production. Increasing herd sizes and economic pressures restrict the amount of time that farmers can spend on counteractive management. Genetic improvement will become increasingly important to restore reproductive performance. Complementary to traditional breeding value estimation procedures, genomic selection based on genome-wide information will become more widely applied. Functional genomics, including transcriptomics (gene expression profiling), produces the information to understand the consequences of selection as it helps to unravel physiological mechanisms underlying female fertility traits. Insight into the latter is needed to develop new effective management strategies to combat subfertility. Here, the importance of functional genomics for dairy cow reproduction so far and in the near future is evaluated. Recent gene profiling studies in the field of dairy cow fertility are reviewed and new data are presented on genes that are expressed in the brains of dairy cows and that are involved in dairy cow oestrus (behaviour). Fast-developing new research areas in the field of functional genomics, such as epigenetics, RNA interference, variable copy numbers and nutrigenomics, are discussed including their promising future value for dairy cow fertility.

Gene expression patterns in anterior pituitary associated with quantitative measure of oestrous behaviour in dairy cows

“…Several genes annotated to have immunological function were found to be associated with oestrous behaviour in all three analyses. Genes with immunological function were also identified in a related study by Beerda et al (2008) on the same experimental cows as in this study but using tissue from the ventral tegmental area of the brain. In their study, an analysis using LIMMA for differential gene expression between groups of day 0 and day 12 cows demonstrated upregulation of multiple immunoglobulin superfamily proteins in day 0 cows.…”

Estrous behavior in dairy cows: identification of underlying mechanisms and gene functions

“…Most gene expression studies dealing with bovine fertility are focused on follicle development and changes in ovarian tissue (Zielak et al, 2007;Mihm et al, 2006). Beerda et al (2008) compared gene expression profiles in brain samples of Holstein Friesian heifers in (pro-)estrus to those in heifers in luteal phase. Quantitative scores for estrous behavior are linked to gene expressions in the pituitary, hypothalamus, hippocampus, amygdala and ventral tegmental area (VTA).…”

A novel synonymous SNP (A47A) of the <i>TMEM95</i> gene is significantly associated with the reproductive traits related to testis in male piglets

“…Although Large White (LW) and Landrace (LD) pigs are the most popular breeds in many countries, especially in western China, they have some reproductive trait defects (Bergfelder-Drüing et al, 2015), e.g., reproductive barriers. It is well known that reproduction traits are determined by both females and males (Beerda et al, 2008;Pausch et al, 2014); however, to date, numerous studies on reproduction traits of female pigs have been published, but the study of male reproductive traits is limited. Owing to the more important role of males in reproduction in the pig industry, male reproduction should be emphasized in the current pig industry (Mack et al, 2014).…”