Related Experiment Video
Updated: Oct 1, 2025
Genetic Mapping of Thermotolerance Differences Between Species of Saccharomyces Yeast via Genome-Wide Reciprocal Hemizygosity Analysis
Published on: August 12, 2019
Genome-wide recombination map construction from single sperm sequencing in cattle
Liu Yang1,2, Yahui Gao1,3, Mingxun Li4
1Animal Genomics and Improvement Laboratory, Henry A. Wallace Beltsville Agricultural Research Center, Agricultural Research Service, USDA, Beltsville, MD, 20705, USA.
Background:
Meiotic recombination is one of the important phenomena contributing to gamete genome diversity. However, except for human and a few model organisms, it is not well studied in livestock, including cattle.
Results:
To investigate their distributions in the cattle sperm genome, we sequenced 143 single sperms from two Holstein bulls. We mapped meiotic recombination events at high resolution based on phased heterozygous single nucleotide polymorphism (SNP). In the absence of evolutionary selection pressure in fertilization and survival, recombination events in sperm are enriched near distal chromosomal ends, revealing that such a pattern is intrinsic to the molecular mechanism of meiosis. Furthermore, we further validated these findings in single sperms with results derived from sequencing its family trio of diploid genomes and our previous studies of recombination in cattle.
Conclusions:
To our knowledge, this is the first large-scale single sperm whole-genome sequencing effort in livestock, which provided useful information for future studies of recombination, genome instability, and male infertility.
