Application of Multilocus Molecular Markers in Cattle Breeding. 1. Minisatellites and Microsatellites

¹ Department of Genetics, Faculty of Agriculture, The Hebrew University, PO Box 12, Rehovot 76100, Israel

The use of DNA fingerprinting for animal breeding requires a large number of independent molecular markers. Most of the currently used DNA probes detect multiband patterns when the probes are hybridized to the bovine genome. However, the number of loci detected by each probe and their level of polymorphism were not reported. This study estimated the usefulness of five multilocus DNA probes for cattle DNA fingerprinting. Three of these probes [S725, R28.1 and GT(12)] hybridized to the same set of loci in the bovine genome, whereas the other two (33.15 and R22.9) detected different loci. Each probe hybridized to 8 to 33 different bands in each individual; apparent diversity was high. Nevertheless, family analyses demonstrated that most of these bands were grouped in several large linkage groups. The number of independent loci detected by the five tested probes in cattle was estimated to be between 15 and 27. These results demonstrate that the apparent diversity revealed by a DNA probe in a population can be misleading and that only family analyses can determine the actual number of loci detected by multilocus DNA probes and their polymorphism.

Key Words: cattle • deoxyribonucleic acid fingerprint • minisatellite

Submitted on April 10, 1992
Accepted on August 31, 1992