Search Results (3)

This study examined the genes related to immunity, metabolism, and antioxidants that may interact with the prevalence of postpartum endometritis in Ossimi sheep. We used fifty endometritis-positive Ossimi sheep and fifty that appeared to be normal. For the purpose of taking blood samples, each ewe had its jugular vein pierced. Nucleotide sequence differences for the immunological (alpha-2-macroglobulin, toll-like receptor 2, transforming growth factor beta, interleukin 1 receptor-associated kinase 3, high-mobility group box 1, Fc alpha and Mu receptor, and inducible nitric oxide synthase), metabolic (ADAM metallopeptidase with thrombospondin type 1 motif 20, potassium sodium-activated channel subfamily T member 2, Mitogen-activated protein kinase kinase kinase 4, FKBP prolyl isomerase 5, and relaxin family peptide receptor 1), and antioxidant (superoxide dismutase, catalase, NADH: ubiquinone oxidoreductase subunit s5, and Heme oxygenase-1) genes were found among sheep with endometritis and those in good condition utilizing PCR-DNA sequencing. Fisher’s exact test revealed a significant difference in the probability of dispersal of all significant nucleotide changes between ewe groups with and without endometritis (p ˂ 0.01). In endometritis ewes, there was a considerable up-regulation of the expression levels of A2M, TLR2, IRAK3, HMGB1, FCAMR, iNOS, ADAMTS20, KCNT2, MAP3K4, FKBP5, RXFP1, and HMOX1. Conversely, there was a down-regulation of the genes that encode TGF-β, SOD, CAT, and NDUFS5. The kind of marker and its frequency in postparturient endometrtits significantly impacted the transcript levels of the indicators under analysis. The results validate that nucleotide changes and gene manifestation outlines in these candidates are significant predictors of the prevalence of endometritis in sheep. Full article

(1) Background: It has been recognized that the origin of fat-tailed sheep occurred within coarse wool breeds and that this character was introgressed several times into thin-tailed populations. However, no study has investigated this idea for Egyptian breeds using mtDNA analyses. (2) Methods: Using new sequences of the control region, we constructed a database of 467 sequences representing 37 breeds including fat- and thin-tailed ones with 80 Egyptian individuals belonging to six local breeds (Barki, Fallahi, Ossimi, Rahmani, Saidi, Sohagi). The phylogenetic tree obtained with the maximum likelihood method was submitted to the Newick Extra program to count the direct and indirect links between the individuals of each breed. (3) Results: Several Egyptian breeds were strongly connected to “primitive” thin-tailed breeds from Europe, indicating a clear genetic background of the “thin tail” breed type that supports the view of archeologists. In several cases, we suspected Western Asian breeds to be involved in the introgression of the fat tail character. In contrast, the Ossimi breed showed a high affinity to a fat-tailed breed of Western Asia, suggesting a direct migration and no thin tail ancestors. The Saidi is unique as our analyses revealed its strong connection with thin-tailed Sudanese breeds. Full article

The most common sheep breeds of Egypt are Ossimi, Rahmani, and Barki breeds. The latter one is well adapted to the challenging desert environment, characterized by food shortage and a high temperature fluctuation. Growth performance of Barki sheep has an important economic value in terms of minimizing the shortage of mutton meat in Egypt. Further, milk production is of great importance for feeding newborn lambs. Eight candidate genes, recently associated with production traits in different breeds, were used to study the effect of genotype on lamb growth and ewe milk traits. The examined genes were LEP, IGF1, DGAT1, STAT5A, PRL, CSN1S2, GHR, and GHRHR, of which one representative single nucleotide polymorphism (SNP) located in the coding region was selected for genotyping. Data from 251 Barki sheep were used in this study. Association analysis between SNPs and lamb growth traits identified rs420693815 of the LEP gene to be significantly associated with weaning weight and average daily gain. In ewes, significant effects on milk yield and composition have been estimated for LEP (rs420693815), STAT5A (rs161082816), PRL (rs422713690), and GHRHR (rs414991449). The results indicated that these genes might be considered as interesting candidates for further investigations to improve growth and milk performance in Barki sheep. Full article