Proceeding of Veterinary and Animal Science Days 2017, 6th- 8th June, Milan, Italy 

HAF © 2013 

Vol. IV, No. 1s   ISSN: 2283-3927 

   

 

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Keywords 

Goat, SNP, Selection 

signatures 

 

CORRESPONDING AUTHOR 

Andrea Talenti  

andrea.talenti@unimi.it 

 

JOURNAL HOME PAGE 

riviste.unimi.it/index.php/haf 

Detection of selection signatures for ear 

 carriage in Maltese goat breed 

Andrea Talenti1*, Francesca Bertolini2, Stefano Frattini1,  

Giulio Pagnacco1, Max F. Rothschild2, Paola Crepaldi1 and  

the Italian Goat Consortium 

 

 

 

1University of Milan, Department of Veterinary Medicine, Italy  

2Iowa State University, Department of Animal Science, USA  

 

Abstract 

Selection and breeding practices in goats have led to the fixation of several traits. This is probably due 

to the standardization of several peculiar morphological characteristics that have always been one of 

the major exclusion criteria of individuals from selection. Among these, ear carriage is one of the most 

ancient and considered a signature of domestication in several species, such as the dog, pig, sheep 

and goat (Boyko et al., 2010). The availability of improved genomic analyses tools for goats may 

provide useful information on genes involved in this trait. By studying, for example, the homozygosity 

decay of haplotypes (contiguous length of alleles) such information can be detected. In the current 

study, we focused on the Maltese goat, a breed showing floppy ears, in comparison with other Italian 

breeds using a goat medium density SNP chip (Nicoloso et al., 2015). A total 48,767 SNP markers for 

369 animals belonging to 16 breeds or populations were analyzed. Genotypes were imputed within 

population excluding markers without known position on the current genome assembly (ARS1, 

Bickhart et al., 2017). Population analysis using MDS, ADMIXTURE and fastSTRUCTURE confirmed the 

good differentiation among the populations. Integrated Haplotype Score (iHS, Sabeti et al., 2007) was 

performed for each population, comparing the regions detected on the Maltese breed with the others 

considered to detect genes that may be involved into shaping  ear morphology. These results may 

provide new insights into ear carriage phenotype by detecting genes that play a pivotal role in shaping 

the goat phenotypic diversity. 

 

Acknowledgement 

The research was funded by INNOVAGEN project. 

http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/deed.en


Proceeding of Veterinary and Animal Science Days 2017, 6th- 8th June, Milan, Italy 

HAF © 2013 

Vol. IV, No. 1s   ISSN: 2283-3927 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/deed.en