Special Issue "New Tools for Monitoring Genetic Diversity in Animals"

A special issue of Animals (ISSN 2076-2615). This special issue belongs to the section "Animal Genetics and Genomics".

Deadline for manuscript submissions: 17 December 2021.

Special Issue Editors

Dr. Giovanni Forcina
E-Mail Website
Guest Editor
CIBIO/InBIO, Centro de Investigação em Biodiversidade e Recursos Genéticos, Universidade do Porto, Campus Agrário de Vairão, 4485-661 Vairão, Portugal
Interests: animal production; conservation genomics; wildlife forensics; evolutionary biology; ancient DNA
Dr. Qian Tang
E-Mail
Guest Editor
Department of Biological Sciences, The National University of Singapore, Singapore 117558, Singapore
Interests: population genetics; evolutionary biology; landscape genetics; ecology; conservation; biological invasions
Dr. María Pilar Cabezas Rodríguez
E-Mail Website
Guest Editor
Department of Biology, Faculty of Sciences, University of Porto, 4169-007 Porto, Portugal
Interests: changes in species distribution and their relation with human activity; cryptic species; DNA metabarcoding; marine biodiversity; monitoring; morphological and molecular taxonomy of marine invertebrates; next-generation sequencing; non-indigenous species
Special Issues and Collections in MDPI journals

Special Issue Information

Dear Colleagues,

Recent years have witnessed unprecedented changes in all life sciences as a result of major advances in molecular biology coupled with the sharp decrease of costs to generate massive amounts of genomic data. Fostered by the fast-growing availability of freely accessible genome resources as reference, the feasibility of applying high-throughput approaches to multiple individuals triggered a virtuous circle which generates more and more data for the scientific community to produce new and increasingly comprehensive studies.     

In this Special Issue, we invite contributions that show how these epochal changes have revolutionized the research on animals, spanning disciplines as wide ranging as conservation, evolution, and ecology. The scope of this Issue is to keep track of the plethora of new tools being used in animal research over time while focusing on possible differences between the results previously obtained with traditional marker systems.

Of particular interest is the discussion about how former results were questioned by the new ones and on the underlying implications as well as on recommendations for mutual research efforts to fill the existing knowledge gaps. Topics may include (but are not limited to) animal evolution, ecology, physiology, conservation, wildlife population biology, wildlife forensics, and zootechny.

Dr. Giovanni Forcina
Dr. Qian Tang
Dr. María Pilar Cabezas Rodríguez
Guest Editors

Manuscript Submission Information

Manuscripts should be submitted online at www.mdpi.com by registering and logging in to this website. Once you are registered, click here to go to the submission form. Manuscripts can be submitted until the deadline. All papers will be peer-reviewed. Accepted papers will be published continuously in the journal (as soon as accepted) and will be listed together on the special issue website. Research articles, review articles as well as short communications are invited. For planned papers, a title and short abstract (about 100 words) can be sent to the Editorial Office for announcement on this website.

Submitted manuscripts should not have been published previously, nor be under consideration for publication elsewhere (except conference proceedings papers). All manuscripts are thoroughly refereed through a single-blind peer-review process. A guide for authors and other relevant information for submission of manuscripts is available on the Instructions for Authors page. Animals is an international peer-reviewed open access monthly journal published by MDPI.

Please visit the Instructions for Authors page before submitting a manuscript. The Article Processing Charge (APC) for publication in this open access journal is 1800 CHF (Swiss Francs). Submitted papers should be well formatted and use good English. Authors may use MDPI's English editing service prior to publication or during author revisions.

Keywords

  • genomic revolution
  • high-throughput technologies
  • reduced representation methods
  • phylogenomics
  • whole-genome sequencing
  • next-generation sequencing
  • genomic library
  • genetic diversity
  • biodiversity monitoring
  • introgression

Published Papers

This special issue is now open for submission, see below for planned papers.

Planned Papers

The below list represents only planned manuscripts. Some of these manuscripts have not been received by the Editorial Office yet. Papers submitted to MDPI journals are subject to peer-review.

Title: Gut Microbiome Studies in Livestock: Achievements, Challenges and Perspectives
Authors: Giovanni Forcina 1*, Lucía Pérez-Pardal 1, Júlio Gil Vale Carvalheira1,2 and Albano Beja-Pereira 1,3,*
Affiliation: 1 CIBIO-InBIO, Research Centre in Biodiversity and Genetic Resources, University of Porto, Rua Padre Armando Quintas 7, 4485-661 Vairão, Portugal; 2 Abel Salazar Institute of Biomedical Sciences, University of Porto, Rua de Jorge Viterbo Ferreira 228, 4050-313 Porto, Portugal; 3 Department of Geosciences, Environment and Spatial Planning, Faculty of Sciences, Universidade do Porto, Rua Campo Alegre 687, 4169-007 Porto, Portugal.
Abstract: Gut microbiome composition and diversity are widely considered key drivers underlying the health and productivity of domestic livestock. The recent emergence and rise of high-throughput sequencing techniques in molecular biology have enabled unprece-dented insights in the study of gut microbiota, supplying new tools for assessing the taxonomic makeup of such large communities. These investigations, spurred by socioeconomic interest, delivered massive amounts of data which have shown to be biased toward a small number of cosmopolitan and highly selected breeds, while local breeds or populations are often neglected despite their proven resilience to extreme environmental conditions. More, the majority of the studies published have been mostly focused on bacteria, while considerably less attention has been devoted to other microbial components such as protists, fungi, and viruses. Most of these data was obtained using classical metabarcoding approaches with one or a few loci to identify and possibly quantify the gut mi-crobiota. However, a suite of increasingly feasible and affordable shotgun approaches is now available for more accurate and comprehensive characterization of microbial communities. In this review, we take stock of the current body of research on livestock gut microbiome, describe the current state-of-the-art on sequencing approach and provide prospects for future studies.

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