A viable herd of genetically uniform cattle - Deleterious alleles seem to have been purged in a feral strain of inbred cows
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Date
18/01/2001Author
Visscher, P M
Smith, D
Hall, SJG
Williams, JL
Metadata
Abstract
Inbreeding, which can lead to the loss of
genetic variation or the accumulation of
deleterious alleles, has been shown to
reduce fitness in wild (1), zoo, laboratory (2) and
farmed (3) animals. But it has been proposed
that when combined with selection,
inbreeding may purge deleterious alleles (4).
Here we provide support for this hypothesis
in a study of the Chillingham cattle, which
shows that this viable herd is almost genetically
uniform. The homozygosity of this
herd far exceeds that of other cattle (5) and
that found in wild populations of other
mammalian species (6,7).