Low frequency of protective variants at regulatory region of PRNP gene indicating the genetically high risk of BSE in Ethiopian Bos indicus and Bos taurus africanus

Abstract

Susceptibility to classical bovine spongiform encephalopathy (BSE) has been linked to 23 bp indel in promoter and 12 bp indel in the first intron of cattle prion protein gene. This study aimed to investigate 23/12 bp indel polymorphisms in the polymorphisms in cattle prion protein (PRNP) gene to reveal the risk of BSE in Ethiopian cattle. Also, frequency of each polymorphism was compared to the other Bos taurus and Bos indicus breeds. According to results, the insertion variant was detected at a low frequency in all of the study populations at both loci. The 23 bp insertion allele in Fogera breed was relatively lower than Borona and Arsi and the same allele at the same locus in Afar breed was higher than the rest of the breeds (0.16). Due to high linkage disequilibrium (LD) of the deletion allele in Bos taurus, the frequencies of deletion allele at 23 bp (0.84) and 12 bp (0.86) loci in Afar breed were relatively closer than the rest of the breeds. In addition, DD/DD was found as the highly frequent diplotype in all of the breeds. The low frequency of insertion alleles at 23 and 12 bp indel sites demonstrate that Ethiopian cattle have a genetically high risk for BSE.

Keywords:

• Bos indicus
• Bos taurus africanus
• Ethiopia
• Indel polymorphism
• PRNP

Acknowledgments

The authors thank Dr. Yalçın Yaman and Mr. Endashaw Terefe for facilitating the work.

Disclosure statement

The authors declare that they do not have any conflict of interest.

Conceived and designed the experiments: CÜ. Performed the experiments: EYT, HC and SEA. Analyzed the data: CÜ and EYT. Wrote the article: EYT, HC, SEA and CÜ. Reviewed and edited the article: CÜ, HC and SEA. All authors have read and approved the manuscript.

Data availability statement

All data generated or analyzed during this study are included in this published article.