Refining the genomic profiles of North African sheep breeds through meta-analysis of worldwide genomic SNP data.

Introduction: The development of reproducible tools for the rapid genotyping of thousands of genetic markers (SNPs) has promoted cross border collaboration in the study of sheep genetic diversity on a global scale.

Methods: In this study, we collected a comprehensive dataset of 239 African and Eurasian sheep breeds genotyped at 37,638 filtered SNP markers, with the aim of understanding the genetic structure of 22 North African (NA) sheep breeds within a global context.

Results And Discussion: We revealed asubstantial enrichment of the gene pool between the north and south shores of the Mediterranean Sea, which corroborates the importance of the maritime route in the history of livestock.

Multiple genomic solutions for local adaptation in two closely related species (sheep and goats) facing the same climatic constraints.

The question of how local adaptation takes place remains a fundamental question in evolutionary biology. The variation of allele frequencies in genes under selection over environmental gradients remains mainly theoretical and its empirical assessment would help understanding how adaptation happens over environmental clines. To bring new insights to this issue we set up a broad framework which aimed to compare the adaptive trajectories over environmental clines in two domesticated mammal species co-distributed in diversified landscapes.

Local adaptations of Mediterranean sheep and goats through an integrative approach.

Small ruminants are suited to a wide variety of habitats and thus represent promising study models for identifying genes underlying adaptations. Here, we considered local Mediterranean breeds of goats (n = 17) and sheep (n = 25) from Italy, France and Spain. Based on historical archives, we selected the breeds potentially most linked to a territory and defined their original cradle (i.

Genetic Variations and Differential DNA Methylation to Face Contrasted Climates in Small Ruminants: An Analysis on Traditionally-Managed Sheep and Goats.

The way in which living organisms mobilize a combination of long-term adaptive mechanisms and short-term phenotypic plasticity to face environmental variations is still largely unknown. In the context of climate change, understanding the genetic and epigenetic bases for adaptation and plasticity is a major stake for preserving genomic resources and the resilience capacity of livestock populations. We characterized both epigenetic and genetic variations by contrasting 22 sheep and 21 goats from both sides of a climate gradient, focusing on free-ranging populations from Morocco.