SINGLE NUCLEOTIDE POLYMORPHISM-BASE CHARACTERIZATION OF HSP 90A1A GENE IN SOME NIGERIAN CATTLE BREEDS.

Heat shock protein (HSP) 90 gene is a member of HSPs 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 90 gene in four Nigerian breeds of cattle. Single Nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) within the nucleotide sequences of four Nigerian bovine HSP90 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 90 gene for the first time in Nigerian zebu cattle. Sequence data detected 6 SNP loci within the coding region of exon 1 of HSP 90 gene which includes: 2 Indels (White Fulani: Del384C i.e. insertion of C at 384th base position and Red Bororo: Del355G i.e. insertion of G at 355th base position), 1 transversion (Sokoto Gudali: C112A) and 3 transitions (White Fulani: G390A, Red Bororo: T55C and C190T).We therefore, 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