Identification of alternative splicing regulators associated with feed efficiency in cattle

• Grant number: 19/18647-7
• Support Opportunities: Scholarships abroad - Research Internship - Master's degree
• Start date: November 01, 2019
• End date: April 21, 2020
• Field of knowledge: Agronomical Sciences - Animal Husbandry - Genetics and Improvement of Domestic Animals
• Principal Investigator: Heidge Fukumasu
• Grantee: Gabriela Ribeiro
• Supervisor: Ruidong Xiang
• Host Institution: Faculdade de Zootecnia e Engenharia de Alimentos (FZEA). Universidade de São Paulo (USP). Pirassununga , SP, Brazil
• Institution abroad: Centre For AgriBioscience (AgriBio), Australia
• Associated to the scholarship: 19/01234-1 - Identification of functional variants of the type SNP, indels and isoforms of alternative splicing associated with feed efficiency in Nelore cattle, BP.MS

Abstract

Selecting domestic animals for productive traits aims to meet human needs over time. Currently, the main goals for selecting beef cattle are to increase productivity, reduce environmental impact and the competition with humans for grains. One way to achieve these aims is to select efficient cattle, which is an important feature from a productive and economic point of view, as it enables the identification of animals that have lower feed intake to produce the same amount of meat. In addition, since efficient animals produce less greenhouse gases, efficient animals can contribute to the mitigation of global warming. However, these complex efficiency-related traits need to be better studied in order to be applied in future breeding programs. In this project, we propose a 6-month internship abroad at Agriculture Victoria, AgriBio, Center for AgriBioscience at the University of Melbourne and Agriculture Victoria Research in Australia to undertake part of the master's research to the identify splicing quantitative trait loci (sQTLs) and Exonic Splicing Enhancer (ESE) and Exonic Splicing Silencer (ESS) regions, which can influence the expression levels of proteins that contribute to variations in FE. For this research we will use multi-tissue transcriptomic data acquired by previous FAPESP thematic project (2014/10452-9). We believe that the period will be enough to carry out the analysis and the acquired data made it possible to create a large biological network that could contribute to the biology of FE systems in cattle. (AU)

Scientific publications

(References retrieved automatically from Web of Science and SciELO through information on FAPESP grants and their corresponding numbers as mentioned in the publications by the authors)

RIBEIRO, GABRIELA; BALDI, FERNANDO; CESAR, ALINE S. M.; ALEXANDRE, PAMELA A.; PERIPOLLI, ELISA; FERRAZ, JOSE B. S.; FUKUMASU, HEIDGE. Detection of potential functional variants based on systems-biology: the case of feed efficiency in beef cattle. BMC Genomics, v. 23, n. 1, p. 14-pg., 2022-11-25. (19/18647-7, 19/01234-1)