| Project duration: | 2017-2020 |
|---|---|
| Project status: | Active |
| Project leader: | Dr hab. inż. Małgorzata Tokarska |
| Project co-investigators: |
Prof. Cino Pertoldi (Aalborg University, Denmark) Dr inż. Sylwia Czarnomska (IBB Warsaw) Mgr Iwona Ruczyńska (IBS PAN, Białowieża) |
The summary and objectives of the project
Posthitis (necrotic inflamation of the prepuce) is a severe disease of the European bison, which affects approx. 6 % of males a year. The disease is incurable and the affected animals are usually eliminated or otherwise the disease leads to penis autoamputation and death. The etiology of posthitis is unknown but recent studies on European bison using cattle tools indicated significant associations between certain cattle markers and the occurence of the disease. A study by Oleński et al. (2015) has shown the existence of genetic background of posthitis in the European bison but the cross – species character of their study did not allow to either indicate the genes and their variants involved in the disease or explain the mechanism if its inheritance.
Sequence – Based Genotyping (SBG) technique will allow to achieve an extensive amount of species-specific data from the whole genome. European bison specific markers will undergo genome wide association analysis (GWAS) to identify markers, regions of chromosomes and genes and their variants affecting susceptibility bison on posthitis. The results will enable to design simple genetic tests of the 20 – 30 most informative SNP markers detected. These tests will allow rapid and reliable genotyping of bison susceptibility to posthitis and the carriers of unfavourable genetic variants.
The aims of the project are:
- identification of the species specific SNPs (single nucleotide polymorphisms markers) associated with postithis in the European bison
- indication the genes and their variants, underlying the development of posthitis in the European bison,
- developing the model of the disease inheritance,
- verification of the potential role of the Y chromosome in the pathogenic process,
- designing informative and cost-effective SNP -chip based genetic test that allows verification of susceptibility to posthitis as well as carriers of unfavorable variants