Fig. 4

Bioinformatic examination of the candidate region. The upstream 30-kb region of the bovine TWIST2 gene is indicated with the transcription start of the gene representing position +1 on the scale bar. Regions that resemble unique bovine sequences are represented by bold lines. Regions that appear to be conserved among mammalian species are marked by grey ellipses and regions that are predicted to have a regulatory function in humans are indicated by a dotted bar. Regions that resemble repetitive elements are indicated by thin lines. The multiple occurring repetitive elements A and B are highlighted with arrows indicating their approximate size and orientation. The candidate region that was predicted by an increased number of NGS reads (inset) is shown by a grey arrow with the localization of the amplicons used in the qPCR indicated by colored dots. The shown qPCR results represent the results of the second set (see “Results of qPCR”). The top row comprises animals from the Belted and Black Galloway (GLW), Braunvieh (new and old breeding type) and Gurtenvieh (BV or OBV) breeds, and crosses between Gurtenvieh and Pinzgauer (RR) and Dutch Belted (LKF). The bottom row comprises animals from the Belted and Black Galloway (GLW) and Russian Yakutian (RUY) breeds (the latter highlighted by orange boxes)