Unique footprints of balancing selection in bovine genome

Balancing selection is the process of selection that preserves various alleles within a population. Studying the areas undergoing balancing selection is essential, because it preserves genetic diversity in a population. Finding genes that exhibit signs of balancing selection during the domestication of cattle is the goal of this study. To identify regions where polymorphism has persisted in the cattle population for millions of years, we examined the genome of cattle. In this study, we used bovine SNP 50 k data to conduct a detailed genome-wide assessment of selection signatures for balancing selection. We have included the genotyped data from 427 animals, including five taurines, two crossbreds, and eight Indian cattle breeds. For this study, we employed Tajima's D approach to identify signature regions undergoing balancing selection. Using the NCBI database, PANTHER 17.0, and CattleQTL database, the annotation was carried out after finding the relevant areas under balancing selection. The number of genomic regions undergoing balancing selection in Ayrshire, Brown-Swiss, Frieswal, Gir, Guernsey, Hariana, Holstein Friesian, Jersey, Kankrej, Nelore, Ongole, Red Sindhi, Sahiwal, Tharparkar, and Vrindavani was 11, 13, 13, 19, 18, 11, 17, 14, 14, 12, 10, 12, 13, 13, and 11, respectively. We have observed multiple immune system-related genes going through balancing selection, including KIT, NFATC2, GBP4, LRRC32, SYT7, RAG1, RAG2, LOC513659, and ZBTB17. In our study, we found that the majority of the immune-related genes and a few genes associated with growth, reproduction, production, and adaptation are undergoing balancing selection.