Genes related to heat tolerance in cattle—a review

Abstract

Heat stress is described as the cumulative detrimental effect caused by an imbalance between heat production within the body and heat dissipation. When cattle are exposed to heat stress with skin surface temperatures exceeding 35 °C, gene networks within and across cells respond to environmental heat loads with both intra and extracellular signals that coordinate cellular and whole-animal metabolism changes to store heat and rapidly increase evaporative heat loss. In this study, we examined evidence from genes known to be associated with heat tolerance (Hsp70, HSF1, HspB8, SOD1, PRLH, ATP1A1, MTOR, and EIF2AK4). This information could serve as valuable resource material for breeding programs aimed at increasing the thermotolerance of cattle.

Keywords:

• Heat tolerance
• gene
• cattle

Disclosure statement

The authors declare no conflict of interest.

Author contributions

LuLan Zeng: writing—original draft preparation. Jicai Zhang and Chuzhao Lei: writing—review and editing. Kaixing Qu and Bizhi Huang: funding acquisition. All authors have read and agreed to the published version of the manuscript.

Additional information

Funding

This work was funded by the Program of National Beef Cattle and Yak Industrial Technology System (CARS-37) from the Ministry of Finance, Ministry of Agriculture, and rural areas, the Program of Yunling Scholar, and the Young and Middle-aged Academic Technology Leader Backup Talent Cultivation Program in Yunnan Province, China (No. 2018HB045), and Yunnan Provincial Major S & T Project (Nos. 2019ZG007 and 2019ZG011).