Allele specific expression is pervasive in cattle — ASN Events
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  2. Concurrent 13 - Systems biology
  3. Allele specific expression is pervasive in cattle

Allele specific expression is pervasive in cattle (#79)

Christy J Vander Jagt 1 2 , Amanda J Chamberlain 1 2 , Leah C Marett 3 , Ben J Hayes 1 2 4 , Michael E Goddard 1 2 5
  1. Department of Economic Development, Jobs, Transport and Resources (Victoria), Bundoora, VIC, Australia
  2. Dairy Futures CRC, Bundoora, Victoria, Australia
  3. Department of Economic Development, Jobs, Transport and Resources (Victoria), Ellinbank, Victoria, Australia
  4. Biosciences Research Centre, LaTrobe University, Bundoora, Victoria, Australia
  5. Faculty of Veterinary & Agricultural Science, University of Melbourne, Parkville, Victoria, Australia

Gene expression can be regarded as a complex trait phenotype, affected by a number of mechanisms, including cis-regulatory genetic variation. Allele specific expression (ASE) analysis can be used to determine the importance of cis-regulatory variation. ASE complements the more traditional expression quantitative trait loci (eQTL) data, narrowing genomic regions of interest and helping pin-point causative variants. In this study, using RNAseq data mapped to parental reference genomes, we analyse the ASE patterns of 17 tissue types and white blood cells (WBC) taken from a single lactating dairy cow. We found that 76% of all heterozygous single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) tested (total 25,251) had significant (p<0.01) ASE in at least one tissue type and of all tested genes containing more than 1 tested SNP (7,985), 74% contained greater than 1 ASE SNP. However, there is a large variation between tissues in which genes contain SNP displaying ASE. We conclude that ASE is pervasive in cattle.  Identification of these ASE SNP will aid in the detection of cis-regulatory variants responsible for phenotypic variation in bovine production traits, which in turn, may lead to improved selection of animals.

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