Siberia will soon have its own cold-resistant breed of cattle

Siberian scientists have been working on breeding cold-resistant breeds of cattle for many years. According to the information of the Institute of Cytology and Genetics of the Siberian Branch of the Russian Academy of Sciences, today the first step in the implementation of this problem has been taken. A new study, jointly with the Royal Veterinary College (London, UK), reveals the mechanisms of common genetic adaptations in farm and wild animals in response to extreme climatic conditions.

As an object of study, the northernmost population of cattle was taken - the Yakut cow, which lives in a territory with a harsh climate and is able to tolerate ambient temperatures below 70 degrees Celsius. Interest in this breed is also dictated by the fact that scientists have not yet been able to study the full history of its origin. In addition, Yakut cattle have a unique gene pool and have not crossed with other populations of cattle, yaks, bison and other closely related species.

“In RUSSIA, huge territories have a low average annual temperature,” commented one of the participants in the research, a leading researcher at the Institute of Cytology and Genetics of the Siberian Branch of the Russian Academy of Sciences, Candidate of Biological Sciences Nikolai Yudin. - The production of MEAT and MILK in such conditions requires the development of local cold-resistant breeds. The mutation we discovered allows us to take the first practical steps in this direction.”

According to Denis Larkin, professor at the Royal Veterinary College, under whose direction the research is being carried out, the breakthrough significance of this work lies in the fact that scientists now know that convergent evolution at the nucleotide level also occurs in human-made animal breeds. “This means that individual breeds can acquire new properties that are not characteristic of their species as a whole,” he stressed.

The scientists also report that human and mouse studies have shown the involvement of mutations in the NRAP gene in a number of cardiomyopathies, diseases that alter the heart's ability to pump blood. They hypothesized that a similar mechanism helps the hearts of cold-hardy and deep-diving animal species, allowing them to continue pumping efficiently in cold weather and at depth.