Background: A higher prevalence of inherited disorders among companion animals are often rooted in their historical restricted artificial selection for a variety of observed phenotypes that eventually decreased genetic diversity. Cats have been afflicted with many inherited diseases due to domestication and intense breed selection. Advances in sequencing technology have generated a more comprehensive way to access genetic information from an individual, allowing identification of putative disease-causing variants and in practice a means to avoid their spread and thus better pedigree management. We examine variants in three domestic shorthair cats and then calculated overall genetic diversity to extrapolate the benefits of this data for breeding programs within a feline colony.
Results: We generated whole genome sequence (WGS) data for three related cats that belong to a large feline pedigree colony. Genome-wide coverage ranged from 27-32X, from which we identified 18 million variants in total. Previously known disease-causing variants were screened in our cats, but none carry any of these known disease alleles. Loss of function (LoF) variants, that are in genes associated with a detrimental phenotype in human or mice were chosen for further evaluation on the comparative impact inferred. A set of LoF variants were observed in four genes, each with predicted detrimental phenotypes as a result. However, none of our cats displayed the expected disease phenotypes. Inbreeding coefficients and runs of homozygosity were also evaluated as a measure of genetic diversity. We find low inbreeding coefficients and total runs of homozygosity, thus suggesting pedigree management of genetic relatedness is acceptable.
Conclusions: The use of WGS of a small sampling among a large feline colony has enabled us to identify possible disease-causing variants, their genotype state and measure pedigree management of genetic diversity. We contend a limited but strategic sampling of feline colony individuals using WGS can inform veterinarians of future health anomalies and guide breeding practices to ensure healthy genetic diversity.
Keywords: Cats; Loss of function variants; Whole-genome sequencing.