Abstract

Heat shock protein (HSP) 70 gene is a member of HSPs sub-family that act as molecular chaperons whenever animals come under thermal assault , they fulfill essential roles of providing cellular protection, immune response, protein synthesis, protein folding and unfolding, protection proteins from cellular stress, inhibitory apoptosis and adaptation during thermal assault. A total of ninety (90) adult bulls from across four extant breeds of Nigerian Zebu cattle comprising of White Fulani (25), Sokoto Gudali (21), Red Bororo (21) and Ambala (23) sampled from northern parts of Nigeria. Genomic DNA was extracted from 90 animal skin tissue samples and was subjected to polymerase chain analyses followed by sequencing of the PCR products for detection SNPs of HSP 70 gene in four Nigerian breeds of cattle. SNPs within the nucleotide sequences of four Nigerian bovine HSP70 gene of were visualised, detected and bio-edited by chromatogram analyses using SeqMan Ngen Tool (DNASTAR®, Inc., Madison, Wisconsin, U.S.A). We pioneered a preliminary single nucleotide polymorphism study of HSP 70 gene for the first time in Nigerian zebu cattle. Sequence data detected 21 SNP loci within the coding region of exon 1 of HSP 70 gene which include: 1 Indel A7Del i.e. deletion of A at base position 7 (White Fulani), 10 transversions (White Fulani: C154G and G220T, Ambala: G220T, Sokoto Gudali: T198A, Red Bororo: C154G, A78T, G106C, T198A, G220T and T254A) and 10 transitions (White Fulani: C145T and G220A, Ambala: C154T and C244T, Sokoto Gudali: C184T and Red Bororo: G157A, C157T, G196A, C244T and G199A). We hypothesize that the detected SNPs should further be associated thermo-tolerance traits to unravel their possible effect on thermal-tolerance performance, adaptability and susceptibility of different Nigerian cattle breeds to environmental stress load and thermal assaults of tropical conditions.