AUTHOR=Michailidou Sofia , Gelasakis Athanasios , Banos Georgios , Arsenos George , Argiriou Anagnostis TITLE=Comparative Transcriptome Analysis of Milk Somatic Cells During Lactation Between Two Intensively Reared Dairy Sheep Breeds JOURNAL=Frontiers in Genetics VOLUME=12 YEAR=2021 URL=https://www.frontiersin.org/journals/genetics/articles/10.3389/fgene.2021.700489 DOI=10.3389/fgene.2021.700489 ISSN=1664-8021 ABSTRACT=
In dairy sheep industry, milk production dictates the value of a ewe. Milk production is directly related to the morphology and physiology of the mammary gland; both being designated targets of breeding strategies. Although within a flock breeding parameters are mutual, large differences in milk production among individual ewes are usually observed. In this work, we tested two of the most productive dairy sheep breeds reared intensively in Greece, one local the Chios breed and one foreign the Lacaune breed. We used transcriptome sequencing to reveal molecular mechanisms that render the mammary gland highly productive or not. While highly expressed genes (caseins and major whey protein genes) were common among breeds, differences were observed in differentially expressed genes.