Group - Bovine genome

The genome of a female Hereford cow has been sequenced by the Bovine Genome Sequencing and Analysis Consortium, a team of researchers led by the National Institutes of Health and the U.S. Department of Agriculture. The results, published in the journal Science on April 24, 2009, are likely to have a major impact on livestock breeding. They were obtained by more than 300 scientists in 25 countries after six years of effort. The size of the bovine genome is 3 Gb (3 billions of base pairs). It contains approximately 22,000 genes of which 14,000 are common to all mammalian species. Bovines share 80 percent of their genes with humans, but cows are much more similar to humans than rodents. They have also about 1,000 genes shared with dogs and rodents but not identified in humans.