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Prion gene (PRNP) haplotype variation in United States goat breeds (Open Access publication)

Genetics Selection Evolution volume 40, Article number: 553 (2008) Cite this article

Abstract

Scrapie eradication efforts cost 18 million dollars annually in the United States and rely heavily upon PRNP genotyping of sheep. Genetic resistance might reduce goat scrapie and limit the risk of goats serving as a scrapie reservoir, so PRNP coding sequences were examined from 446 goats of 10 breeds, 8 of which had not been previously examined at PRNP. The 10 observed alleles were all related to one of two central haplotypes by a single amino acid substitution. At least five of these alleles (M142, R143, S146, H154, and K222) have been associated with increased incubation time or decreased odds of scrapie. To the best of our knowledge, neither S146 nor K222 has been found in any goats with scrapie, though further evaluation will be required to demonstrate true resistance. S146 was more common, present in several breeds at widely varying frequencies, while K222 was observed only in two dairy breeds at low frequency. Overall, this study provides frequency data on PRNP alleles in US goats, shows the pattern of relationships between haplotypes, and demonstrates segregation of multiple scrapieassociated alleles in several breeds not examined before at PRNP.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. USDA, ARS, Animal Disease Research Unit, Pullman, WA, 99164, USA

    Stephen White, Lynn Herrmann-Hoesing, Katherine O'rourke & Janet Alverson

  2. Department of Veterinary Microbiology and Pathology, Washington State University, Pullman, WA, 99164, USA

    Stephen White, Lynn Herrmann-Hoesing, Katherine O'rourke & Janet Alverson

  3. Texas Agricultural Experiment Station, San Angelo, TX, 76901, USA

    Daniel Waldron

  4. School of Veterinary Medicine, University of California, Davis, CA, 95616, USA

    Joan Rowe

  5. USDA, APHIS, Helena, MT, 59601, USA

    Janet Alverson

Authors
  1. Stephen White
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  2. Lynn Herrmann-Hoesing
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  3. Katherine O'rourke
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  4. Daniel Waldron
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  5. Joan Rowe
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  6. Janet Alverson
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Corresponding author

Correspondence to Stephen White.

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Open Access This article is published under license to BioMed Central Ltd. This is an Open Access article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License ( https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0 ), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.

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White, S., Herrmann-Hoesing, L., O'rourke, K. et al. Prion gene (PRNP) haplotype variation in United States goat breeds (Open Access publication). Genet Sel Evol 40, 553 (2008). https://doi.org/10.1186/1297-9686-40-5-553

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1186/1297-9686-40-5-553

Keywords

Genetics Selection Evolution

ISSN: 1297-9686