Publications by authors named "Helen N Nakimbugwe"

The African Goat Improvement Network (AGIN) is a collaborative group of scientists focused on genetic improvement of goats in small holder communities across the African continent. The group emerged from a series of workshops focused on enhancing goat productivity and sustainability. Discussions began in 2011 at the inaugural workshop held in Nairobi, Kenya.

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Article Synopsis
  • African animal trypanosomiasis (AAT) poses significant risks for livestock and wildlife, with increasing human activity heightening the potential for cross-transmission of diseases.
  • The proximity of human settlements to wildlife habitats is exacerbating zoonotic risks, especially for communities living near wildlife-rich ecosystems.
  • Wildlife hosts show some tolerance to trypanosome infections, but this balance can be disrupted, highlighting the importance of effective vector control measures to protect human, animal, and wildlife populations.
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Background: Copy number variations (CNV) are a significant source of variation in the genome and are therefore essential to the understanding of genetic characterization. The aim of this study was to develop a fine-scaled copy number variation map for African goats. We used sequence data from multiple breeds and from multiple African countries.

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Genetic characterization of African goats is one of the current priorities in the improvement of goats in the continent. This study contributes to the characterization effort by determining the levels and number of generations to common ancestors ("age") associated with inbreeding in African goat breeds and identifies regions that contain copy number variation mistyped as being homozygous. Illumina 50k single nucleotide polymorphism genotype data for 608 goats from 31 breeds were used to compute the level and age of inbreeding at both local (marker) and global levels (F) using a model-based approach based on a hidden Markov model.

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