Publications by authors named "Lucie Genestout"
Honeybees, Apis mellifera, have experienced the full impacts of globalisation, including the recent invasion by the parasitic mite Varroa destructor, now one of the main causes of colony losses worldwide. The strong selection pressure it exerts has led some colonies to develop defence strategies conferring some degree of resistance to the parasite. Assuming these traits are partly heritable, selective breeding of naturally resistant bees could be a sustainable strategy for fighting infestations.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFEusocial insects are crucial to many ecosystems, and particularly the honeybee (Apis mellifera). One approach to facilitate their study in molecular genetics, is to consider whole-colony genotyping by combining DNA of multiple individuals in a single pool sequencing experiment. Cheap and fast, this technique comes with the drawback of producing data requiring dedicated methods to be fully exploited.
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- The Manila clam, an important shellfish, faces increased risk from a microparasite due to rising water temperatures and climate change, leading to potential mass mortality events.
- A study was conducted to estimate the heritability of the clam's resistance to this parasite by creating a large cohort of clam families and monitoring their growth and parasite load over a year.
- Results showed moderate heritability for growth traits and high heritability for parasite load, suggesting that selective breeding for disease resistance could be a viable strategy to combat the impact of the parasite.
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- Common carp is widely farmed for aquaculture, typically sold alive or processed, and there is a need for effective genetic improvement methods for yield, given the challenges in recording processing yields from live candidates.
- In a study estimating the genetic parameters related to slaughter yields and morphological predictors, it was found that slaughter yields have high heritability and are closely genetically correlated, allowing for potential improvements through these predictors.
- Morphological predictors demonstrated a high accuracy for estimating headless carcass yield and a good genetic correlation with real yields, indicating that selecting for these predictors could enhance both headless carcass and filet yields in breeding programs.
Plant mutants for genes encoding subunits of mitochondrial complex I (CI; NADH:ubiquinone oxidoreductase), the first enzyme of the respiratory chain, display various phenotypes depending on growth conditions. Here, we examined the impact of photoperiod, a major environmental factor controlling plant development, on two Arabidopsis (Arabidopsis thaliana) CI mutants: a new insertion mutant interrupted in both ndufs8.1 and ndufs8.
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- The study highlights how domestication and selective breeding in cattle have led to the accumulation of harmful genetic mutations, which often go undetected due to the lack of observable symptoms.
- It identified 2,489 potentially harmful genetic variants across 15 European bovine breeds, especially affecting genes related to nervous and sensory systems.
- The research further delves into a specific mutation in the retinitis pigmentosa-1 gene that causes blindness in Normande cattle, which was more prevalent in the past but has decreased due to negative effects on udder health.
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- Researchers examined four Charolais calves with a skin disorder, identifying it as junctional epidermolysis bullosa (JEB) through clinical and histopathological analysis.
- Using whole-genome sequencing, they discovered extended regions of homozygosity and focused on a particular gene, ITGB4, where a harmful deletion was found.
- The study concluded that the identified mutation is a recent autosomal recessive mutation linked to the condition, marking a successful application of modern DNA sequencing methods.
To assist cattle producers transition from microsatellite (MS) to single nucleotide polymorphism (SNP) genotyping for parental verification we previously devised an effective and inexpensive method to impute MS alleles from SNP haplotypes. While the reported method was verified with only a limited data set (N = 479) from Brown Swiss, Guernsey, Holstein, and Jersey cattle, some of the MS-SNP haplotype associations were concordant across these phylogenetically diverse breeds. This implied that some haplotypes predate modern breed formation and remain in strong linkage disequilibrium.
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