Molecular basis of a new ovine model for human 3M syndrome-2.

Background: Brachygnathia, cardiomegaly and renal hypoplasia syndrome (BCRHS, OMIA 001595-9940 ) is a previously reported recessively inherited disorder in Australian Poll Merino/Merino sheep. Affected lambs are stillborn with various congenital defects as reflected in the name of the disease, as well as short stature, a short and broad cranium, a small thoracic cavity, thin ribs and brachysternum. The BCRHS phenotype shows similarity to certain human short stature syndromes, in particular the human 3M syndrome-2.

Empirical assessment of competitive hybridization and noise in ultra high density canine tiling arrays.

Background: In addition to probe sequence characteristics, noise in hybridization array data is thought to be influenced by competitive hybridization between probes tiled at high densities. Empirical evaluation of competitive hybridization and an estimation of what other non-sequence related features might affect noisy data is currently lacking.

Results: A high density array was designed to a 1.

Brachygnathia, cardiomegaly and renal hypoplasia syndrome (BCRHS) in Merino sheep maps to a 1.1-megabase region on ovine chromosome OAR2.

A genome scan was conducted to map the autosomal recessive lethal disorder brachygnathia, cardiomegaly and renal hypoplasia syndrome (BCRHS) in Poll Merino sheep. The scan involved 10 affected and 27 unaffected animals from a single Poll Merino/Merino sheep flock, which were genotyped with the Illumina Ovine SNP50 BeadChip. Association and homozygosity mapping analyses located the disorder in a region comprising 20 consecutive SNPs spanning 1.

In silico QTL mapping of maternal nurturing ability with the mouse diversity panel.

Significant variation exists for maternal nurturing ability in inbred mice. Although classical mapping approaches have identified quantitative trait loci (QTL) that may account for this variation, the underlying genes are unknown. In this study, lactation performance data among the mouse diversity panel were used to map genomic regions associated with this variation.

A genealogical survey of Australian registered dog breeds.

Breeding practices were analysed for 32 registered dog breeds representing very small registries (120 Central Asian shepherd dogs) through to very large registries (252,521 German shepherd dogs) in Australia. The vast majority (91%) of registered kennels in Australia that were sampled did not regularly employ either close breeding or popular sire usage in their kennels and the weighted mean inbreeding coefficient of Australian pedigree dogs was <5%. Australian breed mean inbreeding coefficients ranged from 0% (Central Asian shepherd dog) to 10.