What is genomics and how might it affect dairy cattle breeding?
In 1988 Genetic Visions began utilizing marker assisted selection to help choose between full brothers, to determine which young sires should enter the progeny test program. This new technology that we are calling Genomics is substantially more powerful than what has been utilized in the last 20 years. With the completion of the bovine gene mapping, researchers in the Bovine Functional Genomics Lab (BFLG) at USDA, in conjunction with a few other research labs both domestic and foreign, were able to estimate the SNP effects at some 50,000 loci. DNA from over 5200 Holstein bulls from the CDDR (Cooperative Dairy DNA Repository, semen was donated by 7 AI organizations in the US and Canada), were used to estimate the SNP effects. ((SNP is a Single Nucleotide Polymorphisms. The SNP’s that USDA is using are limited to a single basepair substitution or deletion. The change in the DNA structure is inherited or transmitted to offspring. Because they can detect the change it becomes a genetic mar
