Towards interbreed IBD fine mapping of the mh locus: Double-muscling in the Asturiana de los Valles breed involves the same locus as in the Belgian Blue cattle breed

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Abstract
The Spanish “Asturiana” cattle breed is characterized by the segregation of a genetically determined muscular hypertrophy referred to as double-muscling or “culones”. We demonstrate by linkage analysis that this muscular hypertrophy involves the mh locus previously shown to cause double-muscling in the Belgian Blue cattle breed, pointing towards locus homogeneity of this trait across both breeds. Moreover, using a twopoint and multipoint maximum likelihood approach, we show that flanking microsatellite markers are in linkage disequilibrium with the mh locus in both breeds albeit with different alleles. Finally, we discuss how allelic homogeneity across breeds might be exploited to achieve efficient genetic fine-mapping of the mh locus.