Cattle are the next top (animal) model

The study of mutations underlying sporadic syndromes in cattle, which also occur in humans, offers an interesting alternative to laboratory animals for confirming the genetic aetiology of isolated clinical case reports and gaining insight into the molecular mechanisms involved. This is the conclusion of a report by an international team of researchers led by the French National Institute for Agricultural Research (INRA) in collaboration with ALLICE, the CEA and VetAgroSup for the French partners, which was published in the journal ' Scientific Reports ' on Wednesday September 13, 2017. " In humans, the clinical and molecular characterization of sporadic syndromes is often hindered by the small number of patients and the difficulty in developing animal models for severe dominant conditions. In contrast, the structure of cattle populations and the large amount of genomic and phenotypic data that are now available in this species, make it easy to quickly identify the causative mutations and to study their effects on important cohorts of affected animals. " explains the leader of the study, Dr. Aurélien Capitan, scientist at INRA and ALLICE. " In this article, our aim was to illustrate, with selected examples, the numerous opportunities offered by the bovine animal model ." In their article, the researchers identified candidate mutations for seven dominant syndromes simply by sequencing the whole genome of a single affected animal and filtering out the polymorphisms found in the whole genomes of more than 1000 control individuals representing the main ancestors of their breeds.