A Steak in Genomics™

DENVER - The bustling ballrooms of Kalispell, Montana, will soon be filled with innovative and forward-thinking cattlemen and women during the 69th annual National Red Angus Convention. The Commercial Cattlemen’s Symposium, hosted by the Red Angus Association of America, is sure to be a highlight of the convention and will offer beef producers the tools and knowledge they need to strengthen their operations and improve their profitability. This year’s symposium, held at the Hilton Garden Inn in Kalispell on Wednesday, Sept. 14, will feature a diverse, experienced group of speakers guaranteed to offer valuable insight to attendees. “We are thrilled to continue offering commercial cattlemen and women free educational events during the annual National Red Angus Convention. As the Commercial Marketing Team, it is always exhilarating to bring so many commercial operations – our customers – together for this event. Red Angus has always been focused on the cow, and with the release of our new...

Technology in the beef industry is constantly improving, which can make it hard to keep up. Plus, we want to ensure that we are using all of the available practices to produce beef in a profitable, efficient, and conscientious manner. With this in mind, National Cattlemen's Beef Association hosts an annual webinar series, and this year I am excited to be involved! On February 16th at 7PM CST, Bob Weaber and I will present during the NBCA Cattlemen's Webinar Series. Dr. Weaber will discuss the positive effects crossbreeding has on your cow herd and how new research is allowing us to better understand why crossbreeding works. I will discuss where we have been and where we are going with DNA and genomic technologies. There will be a question and answer period, so please bring questions. Register today at www.beefusa.org !

The American Simmental Association continues to adjust their management and reporting of genetic defects and abnormalities. From their eNews newsletter: At the April board meeting, the ASA Board of Trustees voted unanimously to remove the color system from TraitTrac and add all genetic conditions with available tests into our TraitTrac system (including the most recent condition, developmental duplication). While the existing TraitTrac has worked well for years, it gives a false impression that "green" animals are clear of genetic defects - they are only clear of the ones we know about. Furthermore, this gives us flexibility to add new conditions to TraitTrac relatively simply as they are discovered. In the new TraitTrac system, the main animal page says "TraitTrac" if an animal has no results on any genetic conditions. If the statement "Check for available results" appears under "TraitTrac" then there is additional information on this animal. ...

MAGNUM - AMGV38 Picture from search.gelbvieh.org On January 14th, Dr. Jon Beever of the University of Illinois sent a letter to the Board of Directors of the American Gelbvieh Association informing them that his lab had resolved issues with odd results when testing fullblood Gelbvieh animals with the DNA test for Contractural Arachnodactyly (CA, “fawn calf”). One of the oldest fullblood Gelbvieh bulls, Magnum (AMGV38) tested as a carrier of the CA abnormality, and several other Gelbvieh animals with little Angus influence tested as either affected or carrier. Dr. Beever took several lines of action to evaluate what was producing the odd results and after DNA sequencing the region in the Gelbvieh animals found that the protein sequence was still functional in the Gelbvieh animals. But, the DNA base pair used in the diagnostic test was the same in affected Angus and normal Gelbvieh. Thus, the test was producing false positives in Gelbvieh animals. Dr. Beever originally designed...

In addition to DNA variants' utility in predicting EPDs , disease risk, and other traits, they are also very useful in predicting an individual's ancestry. The most common use of this in livestock is parentage verification or testing. But DNA variants can also be used to look at relationships over much longer time scales. For example, my coauthors and I have used SNPs to look at relationships among ruminant species and breeds of cattle . Last week I sent 10 mL of my saliva to 23andMe to for processing and DNA testing. This is the human equivalent of genomic-enhanced EPDs (although 23andMe uses different statistical methods). In addition to finding out if I carry specific genetic disorders and my risk for common diseases, I will also find out about my ancestry. One of the interesting things we have learned from sequencing ancient genomes is that most humans from Europe or Asia have Neanderthal ancestry . So, as part of my 23andMe results I will learn what percent of ...

Here is a link to my article in the BEEF Cow-Calf Weekly. I know there may be some questions (and disagreement) about my article. Please comment with questions or contact me by email. Luckily, we now have the tools to manage these broken genes.