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Expression profiles of genes regulating dairy cow fertility: recent findings, ongoing activities and future possibilities*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 August 2008

B. Beerda ,
J. Wyszynska-Koko ,
M. F. W. te Pas ,
A. A. C. de Wit  and
R. F. Veerkamp
B. Beerda*
Affiliation:
Animal Breeding and Genomics Centre, Animal Sciences Group of Wageningen UR, 8200 AB Lelystad, The Netherlands
J. Wyszynska-Koko
Affiliation:
Institute of Genetics and Animal Breeding, Polish Academy of Sciences, Jastrzebiec, 05-552 Wolka Kosowska, Poland
M. F. W. te Pas
Affiliation:
Animal Breeding and Genomics Centre, Animal Sciences Group of Wageningen UR, 8200 AB Lelystad, The Netherlands
A. A. C. de Wit
Affiliation:
Animal Breeding and Genomics Centre, Animal Sciences Group of Wageningen UR, 8200 AB Lelystad, The Netherlands
R. F. Veerkamp
Affiliation:
Animal Breeding and Genomics Centre, Animal Sciences Group of Wageningen UR, 8200 AB Lelystad, The Netherlands
*
E-mail: bonne.beerda@wur.nl
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Abstract

Subfertility has negative effects for dairy farm profitability, animal welfare and sustainability of animal production. Increasing herd sizes and economic pressures restrict the amount of time that farmers can spend on counteractive management. Genetic improvement will become increasingly important to restore reproductive performance. Complementary to traditional breeding value estimation procedures, genomic selection based on genome-wide information will become more widely applied. Functional genomics, including transcriptomics (gene expression profiling), produces the information to understand the consequences of selection as it helps to unravel physiological mechanisms underlying female fertility traits. Insight into the latter is needed to develop new effective management strategies to combat subfertility. Here, the importance of functional genomics for dairy cow reproduction so far and in the near future is evaluated. Recent gene profiling studies in the field of dairy cow fertility are reviewed and new data are presented on genes that are expressed in the brains of dairy cows and that are involved in dairy cow oestrus (behaviour). Fast-developing new research areas in the field of functional genomics, such as epigenetics, RNA interference, variable copy numbers and nutrigenomics, are discussed including their promising future value for dairy cow fertility.

Keywords

dairy cowfertilitygenomicsmicroarraytranscriptomics
Type
Full Paper
Information
animal , Volume 2 , Issue 8 , August 2008 , pp. 1158 - 1167
Copyright
Copyright © The Animal Consortium 2008

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Footnotes

*

This invited paper was presented at BSAS meeting ‘Fertility in Dairy Cows – bridging the gaps’ 30-31 August 2007, Liverpool Hope University.

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