The genetic ancestry of American Creole cattle inferred from uniparental and autosomal genetic markers

Abstract

Cattle imported from the Iberian Peninsula spread throughout America in the early years of discovery and colonization to originate Creole breeds, which adapted to a wide diversity of environments and later received influences from other origins, including zebu cattle in more recent years. We analyzed uniparental genetic markers and autosomal microsatellites in DNA samples from 114 cattle breeds distributed worldwide, including 40 Creole breeds representing the whole American continent, and samples from the Iberian Peninsula, British islands, Continental Europe, Africa and American zebu. We show that Creole breeds differ considerably from each other, and most have their own identity or group with others from neighboring regions. Results with mtDNA indicate that T1c-lineages are rare in Iberia but common in Africa and are well represented in Creoles from Brazil and Colombia, lending support to a direct African influence on Creoles. This is reinforced by the sharing of a unique Y-haplotype between cattle from Mozambique and Creoles from Argentina. Autosomal microsatellites indicate that Creoles occupy an intermediate position between African and European breeds, and some Creoles show a clear Iberian signature. Our results confirm the mixed ancestry of American Creole cattle and the role that African cattle have played in their development.

Evolution and domestication of the Bovini species

“…An African sub‐haplogroup T1c1 is well represented in Brazil and Paraguay, providing evidence for direct migration from Africa to South America (Ginja et al . 2019). The T3 haplogroup occupies around half of the populations in south‐west Asia (Lenstra et al .…”

“…A large variety of well‐adapted Criollo breeds (Ginja et al . 2019) are mainly of Iberian and African origin. In contrast, most cattle imported into the USA and Canada and later to Australia and New Zealand originated from north‐west Europe (Felius et al .…”

“…As with the African taurine cattle, several Criollo breeds are partially of indicine origin (Ginja et al . 2019). In the USA, the import of zebu led to the development of the popular transboundary Brahman zebu breed, which has taurine mtDNA as well as an autosomal taurine ancestry of 9% (Koufariotis et al .…”

Genomic Tools for Effective Conservation of Livestock Breed Diversity

“…Beginning in 1990, microsatellite molecular markers became very successful and extensively used for parentage testing, individual identification, and breed allocation in domestic animals, and were used for genetic diversity characterization studies [13][14][15][16][17][18][19]. The developments of microsatellite marker maps became available to estimate additive genetic effects of markers and were routinely used, for example, for Quantitative Locus (QTL) detection in most livestock species.…”

“…One major problem surrounding those analyses is the comparison between them if different numbers or subsets of microsatellites are genotyped. Fortunately, large-scale microsatellite analyses have been developed in livestock breeds [19,[34][35][36][37].…”