Genetic characterization of Northeast Asian cattle based on sequence polymorphisms in the complete mitochondrial genome

In this study, we analyzed complete mtDNA sequences variation and genetic relationship among taurine, indicine and Bison groups. In total, 107 sequences from different breeds, 45 European (45 Italian), 16 Middle East Asian (seven Iranian and nine Iraqi), 41 Northeast Asian (34 Korean and seven Japanese), two Nellore (Bos indicus) and two American Bison bison (Ame. bison) were obtained from Gen-Bank database. One Korean Hanwoo (Bos taurus) sequence was generated using the SOLiD System. In total, 1370 polymorphic sites, representing 8.39% of the complete 107 mtDNA sequences (16,338 bp) were detected and of these, 1186 parsimony informative polymorphic sites were identified. Neighbor-joining tree indicated that Korean, Japanese, Iranian, Iraqi, and Italian cattle were closely related to one another, but are separated from B. bison. The B. taurus mtDNA polymorphism was greater in the D-loop than in the other regions. The ATP8, ND3, ND5, and ND6 regions were also quite parsimony informative, similar to Cyt b. In addition, this study revealed a distinct genetic difference between Korean cattle and B. indicus.