High Density SNP Genotyping Chip for the Sheep Genome

9am, Tuesday 3 September

Release of a High Density SNP Genotyping Chip for the Sheep Genome

An international team has developed a powerful new tool that can be used to test a sheeps genetics and predict its productivity and meat quality.

FarmIQ in conjunction with Illumina and the International Sheep Genomics Consortium (ISGC) are today announcing completion of the Ovine Infinium HD SNP BeadChip.

This new chip is capable of identifying up to 600,000 points across the sheep genome (otherwise known as single nucleotide polymorphisms or SNPs). It is one of the first high-density chips developed for sheep and follows the release in January 2009 of the OvineSNP50 BeadChip, which can identify over 50,000 points.

FarmIQ commissioned the HD Chip as part of its mission to add value to red meat by improving linkages between animals meat yield and quality, and what happens on the farm and in the processing plant.

During testing since May, the HD Chip has been used to test 5000 animals from a range of breeds and has proved very accurate and robust, says John McEwan of AgResearch, who led the chip design work with Rudi Brauning.

Development of the HD Chip started with sequencing of the whole genome (gene map) for 75 individual sheep by Kim Worley and Richard Gibbss team at the Baylor College of Medicine Human Genome Sequencing Center (BCM-HGSC). DNA samples and measurements were also taken from 12,000 New Zealand lamb carcasses. The sheep tested represent a broad range of breeds.

Teams at AgResearch, BCM-HGSC, the Department of Primary Industries Victoria, USDA and CSIRO then collaborated to finalise the identification of more than 20 million sheep gene sequence variants.

John McEwan says the new HD chip is more than an expanded version of the OvineSNP50 chip and it will dramatically increase the power to identify key genes. The HD chip includes 53,000 of the DNA variants that are known to affect proteins and therefore determine the animals measurable traits.

Read the original:
High Density SNP Genotyping Chip for the Sheep Genome