Comparative PRNP genotyping of U.S. cattle sires for potential association with BSE

The recent discovery of significant associations between bovine spongiform encephalopathy (BSE) susceptibility in German cattle and the frequency distributions of insertion/deletion (indel) polymorphisms within the bovine PRNP gene prompted an evaluation of 132 commercial U.S. artificial insemination (AI) sires from 39 breeds. Forward primer sequences from published primer sets targeting indels within the putative bovine PRNP promoter, intron 1, and the 3' UTR (untranslated region) were synthesized with unique 5' fluorescent labels and utilized to develop a rapid multiplexed PCR assay for identifying BSE-associated indels as well as facilitating polymorphism analyses and/or marker-assisted selection. Significant differences ( p < 0.05 all tests) were detected between the frequencies of bovine PRNP promoter alleles for 48 healthy German cattle previously described and 132 commercial U.S. cattle sires. The frequency of the 23-bp promoter allele observed for commercial U.S. cattle sires strongly resembled that recently described for 43 BSE-affected German cattle. No significant difference ( p = 0.051) was detected between the distributions of promoter genotypes for healthy German cattle and our panel of commercial U.S. cattle sires. Interestingly, significant differences ( p < 0.01; p < 0.02) were also noted between the frequencies and distributions of intron 1 alleles and genotypes, respectively, for BSE-affected German cattle and our panel of U.S. cattle sires. No significant allelic or genotypic differences were detected for the 14-bp 3' UTR indel for any given comparison between German cattle and commercial U.S. cattle sires.