Wait?! You might say. Hadn’t we already cracked the cattle genome? Yes and no. Before we had a basic outline of the genome so yes, it was cracked, but minimally so. But now, thanks to the work of an international consortium of scientists, we have a much more detailed map – in other words, the genome is laid wide open.
Think of it like Google Maps. What we knew before of the genome resembled the satellite view in Google Maps. Researchers could see the lines in the bigger picture, but not much detail.
Late last year scientists combined the sequenced genome data from 1200 animals of different breeds, mostly ancestral bulls, in a database that is open to many researchers to analyze using new techniques. Data from additional individual animals of many breeds are being added regularly by researchers around the globe.
The initial ancestor bulls produced millions of descendants – the Holsteins alone have fathered 6.3 million daughters at minimum – which has rendered an enormous amount of detail to the genome map. Think of this like Google Maps’ Street View where you can see every building, road, sign, vehicle, person, and other things captured in the interactive photo of that location. Researchers can similarly see striking detail in the cattle genome map.
With the equivalent of Google Maps Street View at their fingertips, researchers can see and understand far more about the genome than they could in single, isolated genome mapping projects using earlier tools and techniques.
"In the past we had only mapped approximately two percent of the variation. Now we have knowledge of it all for a great number of key ancestors. If you use the analogy of a road map, we previously only had sufficient information to see the mileposts on the chromosomal roadmap, but now we can see the entire roadmap," says Bernt Guldbrandtsen in an article in Science Daily.
