@article{254d7ef36b234d0a8ce87e54fab72211,
title = "A locus conferring tolerance to Theileria infection in African cattle",
abstract = "East Coast fever, a tick-borne cattle disease caused by the Theileria parva parasite, is among the biggest natural killers of cattle in East Africa, leading to over 1 million deaths annually. Here we report on the genetic analysis of a cohort of Boran cattle demonstrating heritable tolerance to infection by T. parva (h2 = 0.65, s.e. 0.57). Through a linkage analysis we identify a 6 Mb genomic region on Bos taurus chromosome 15 that is significantly associated with survival outcome following T. parva exposure. Testing this locus in an independent cohort of animals replicates this association with survival following T. parva infection. A stop gained variant in this region was found to be highly associated with survival across both related and unrelated animals, with only one of the 20 homozygote carriers (T/T) of this change succumbing to the disease in contrast to 44 out of 97 animals homozygote for the reference allele (C/C). Consequently, we present a genetic locus linked to tolerance of one of Africa{\textquoteright}s most important cattle diseases, raising the promise of marker-assisted selection for cattle that are less susceptible to infection by T. parva.",
keywords = "Adaptor Proteins, Signal Transducing/genetics, Alleles, Animals, Apoptosis Regulatory Proteins/genetics, Cattle, Cattle Diseases/genetics, Humans, Theileria parva/genetics, Theileria/genetics, Theileriasis/genetics",
author = "David Wragg and E.A.J. Cook and {Latr{\'e} de Lat{\'e}}, Perle and Tatjana Sitt and Hanneke Hemmink and M. Chepkowny and Njeru, {Mercy, Karimi} and E.J. Poole and Jessica Powell and Edith Paxton and Rebecca Callaby and Andrea Talenti and A.A. Miyunga and G. Ndambuki and Stephen Mwaura and Harriet Auty and Oswald Matika and Musa Hassan and Karen Marshall and Tim Connelley and Liam Morrison and Mark Bronsvoort and Ivan Morrison and P.G. Toye and James Prendergast",
note = "Funding Information: This research was conducted as part of the CGIAR Research Program on Livestock. ILRI is supported by contributors to the CGIAR Trust Fund. CGIAR is a global research partnership for a food-secure future. Its science is carried out by 15 Research Centers in close collaboration with hundreds of partners across the globe (www.cgiar. org). Some of the work described in this paper was supported by grant BB/H009515/1 awarded jointly by the then UK Department for International Development and the UK Biotechnology and Biological Sciences Research Council (BBSRC) under the Combating Infectious Diseases of Livestock for International Development (CIDLID) program to WIM and PGT. This research was funded in part by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation and with UK aid from the UK Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office (Grant Agreement OPP1127286) under the auspices of the Centre for Tropical Livestock Genetics and Health (CTLGH), established jointly by the University of Edinburgh, SRUC (Scotland{\textquoteright}s Rural College), and the International Livestock Research Institute (ILRI). This work was also supported by funding from the BBSRC (BBS/E/D/30002275) to JGDP. The funders had no role in study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish, or preparation of the manuscript. The authors are very grateful to the management of the Ol Pejeta Conservancy, Private Bag, Nanyuki 10400, Kenya for their assistance in performing the field studies. The authors would also like to thank Mingyan Yu and Cynthia Onzere of ILRI, for preparing the DNA samples for the genomic analyses. Publisher Copyright: Copyright: {\textcopyright} 2022 Wragg et al. This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.",
year = "2022",
month = apr,
day = "21",
doi = "10.1371/journal.pgen.1010099",
language = "English",
volume = "18",
journal = "PLoS Genetics",
issn = "1553-7390",
publisher = "Public Library of Science",
number = "4",
}