"This is just the beginning of a revolution in the way we produce our animals and food," Dr Dalrymple says. "Once we have a complete set of genes that influence tenderness, for example, we will be able to predict that animals of a certain type, fed a particular type of pasture or grain, will consistently produce meat of a particular standard of tenderness and marbling."
He says, despite the centuries of inbreeding involved in developing different cattle breeds, most maintain a "surprisingly large" degree of genetic diversity. Contributors to the US$53 million international effort to sequence the genome of the cow (Bos taurus) include: the National Human Genome Research Institute (NHGRI), which is part of the National Institutes of Health (NIH); the U.S. Department of Agriculture's Agricultural Research Service and Cooperative State Research, Education, and Extension Service; the state of Texas; Genome Canada via Genome British Columbia, The Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organization of Australia; Agritech Investments Ltd., Dairy InSight, Inc, AgResearch Ltd; the Kleberg Foundation; and the National, Texas and South Dakota Beef Check-off Funds.
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Contact: Lisa Palu
lisa.palu@csiro.au
61-732-142-960
CSIRO Australia
16-Aug-2006