VALIDATION AND CHARACTERIZATION OF LOCI ASSOCIATED WITH FETAL LOSS IN DAIRY CATTLE

The goal of this project is to identify cattle that are predisposed to abortion due to genetic causes so that they may be removed from the breeding population and so that the causes of abortion are better understood. The aims of this project are to: 1) Identify and validate loci associated with fetal loss in Holstein heifers and primiparous cows through a genome wide association analysis and a gene set enrichment analysis using single nucleotide polymorphisms as gene proxies, 2) Characterize the loci associated with fetal loss to identify putative causal mutations through long read sequencing and 3) Identify if selection for reduced fetal loss is unfavorably correlated with production traits.