Polar cows: genetic scientists have revealed the secret of frost resistance of cows in the Far North

2024 Author: Richard Flannagan | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-15 23:55

In regions with a cold climate, farmers face a big problem - the difficulty in raising cattle. However, the recent discovery of scientists from Novosibirsk and London will improve the situation. Possibly, very soon in the North cows-polar explorers will graze everywhere. The fact is that the researchers managed to reveal the "genetic secret" of the frost resistance of the unique Yakut cows - an aboriginal breed, whose representatives are able to live in the Arctic Circle.

Yakut horned miracle

The cows in question have been living in northern latitudes for more than a millennium. In terms of growth, these animals are shorter than ordinary cows, and their wool is thicker and curly. Scientists do not have exact data on their origin, but it is known that these artiodactyls are really aborigines and are able to withstand extremely low temperatures, -70 ° C and below.

Purebred Yakut cows can be found only in their homeland, in the Republic of Sakha, and on the farms of the Novosibirsk Research Institute. In Yakutia, there are about 2 thousand of them, but once these animals lived here much more - at the beginning of the last century, the number of livestock reached almost half a million. However, after the revolution, most of the local cows were put under the knife, replacing them with imported animals from other regions. This was due to the fact that the Yakut cows do not have very high milk yields, and under the Soviet regime, it was paramount not to preserve the unique frost-resistant breed, but to produce large volumes of meat and milk for the population.

Meanwhile, in addition to the fact that Yakut cows have marbled meat, they give tasty, nutritious (up to 11% fat) milk.

Local cows do not require complex care. It is enough to feed them only with hay and compound feed, and in the warm season they eat only grass. Their manure does not have a sharp unpleasant odor, which the excrement of ordinary cows has, but resembles that of a horse.

In addition to low milk yield, the representatives of this breed also have a couple of disadvantages. Firstly, their udders are covered with wool and have small nipples, which is why they can only be milked by hand, without the use of technology. Secondly, they "agree" to mate only in a natural way - with a bull. Attempts at artificial insemination give poor results.

Nevertheless, the amazing resistance of such cows to frost is simply amazing. They can easily live in the Far North, and in a not too harsh climate they can be kept in an unheated room in winter. And at the same time, they practically do not get sick.

The endurance of the Yakut breed is eloquently told by a story that happened several years ago in the Eveno-Bytantai region, which was written about in the local press. At the beginning of autumn, six cows did not return from the pasture, they were looking for them for a long time, but to no avail. The search was abandoned when the 40-degree frost came. And in December, three of the fugitives returned to the farm on their own. In their footsteps, residents established that for several months the cows were in the taiga on the opposite side of the local river (how they got there is not specified). All this time, they periodically approached the shore and tried the ice for strength, trying to get back. It was when trying to return to the other side, to their native land, that three out of six cows died - they fell through the ice.

The importance of preserving such a unique breed and spreading it in other regions is evidenced by such a serious study of Russian scientists and their British colleagues.

Aboriginal gene

The research involved employees of the Institute of Cytology and Genetics (ICG) of Novosibirsk and the Royal Veterinary College London. They had to determine what genetic characteristics allow the animals to withstand severe frosts. The scientists presented the results of the study in the journal Molecular Biology and Evolution.

It turned out that Yakut cows have a unique gene pool. It turns out that frost-hardy cows separated from a common European ancestor about 5 thousand years ago and have never crossed with other populations of cattle - for example, with bison or yaks. This allowed scientists to conclude that adaptation to extremely cold temperatures was formed in this aboriginal breed due to its own gene pool.

However, here the researchers were in for a surprise: in the genome of cows in Yakutia, they found many genetic variants that are also present in their southern counterparts - artiodactyls from Africa and Asia - and, at the same time, are absent in cattle that live in Europe. How so? Researchers suggest that such genetic variants were present in common bovine ancestors initially, but later, as a result of long-term selection, they were lost in European cows. This selection bypassed the Yakut cows, which called them to preserve their genetic resistance to frost and, in general, to radical changes in environmental conditions. It seems that these same genetic chains helped cows in Asia and Africa at one time to adapt to extreme heat.

In the course of the study, a feature inherent only in Yakut cows was discovered - the presence of a coding nucleotide substitution in them, which had a great influence on the properties of the corresponding protein. Scientists note that it is not so often possible to detect independent evolution in the same nucleotide position of a gene in animals. One example is the presence of a nucleotide substitution in both dolphins and bats that induces the ability to echolocate.

One of the participants in the study from the team of the Novosibirsk Institute, Ph. D. Nikolay Yudin, noted that huge territories in Russia have a low average annual temperature, and the breeding of frost-resistant breeds of cows would improve the situation with the production of meat and milk in these regions.

“The mutation in the NRAP gene, which we discovered, will help to take the first practical steps in this direction,” he concluded.

Now researchers have to solve the following problem: how to synthesize the desired gene and inoculate it with other types of cows? If they succeed, there will be a breakthrough in cattle breeding.

By the way, if we talk about these animals, we advise you to move away from the usual template according to which a cow is considered a stupid and phlegmatic animal. Confirmation of this - daring antics of ordinary cows, famous all over the world. These animals did not want to live in a stable and proved that they are capable of more.