Analysis of Prolactin and Kappa-Casein Genes Polymorphism in Four Cattle Breeds in Turkey

The objective of this study was to identify allele and genotype frequencies of CSN3 and PRL genes in four cattle breeds in Turkey. For this purpose, a total of 390 cattle of East Anatolian Red (EAR), Zavot, Brown Swiss (BS) and Simmental (SIM) breeds were genotyped by PCR-RFLP method. A 443 bp fragment of CSN3 and a 156 bp fragment of PRL were amplified and digested with HindIII and RsaI restriction enzymes, respectively. For CSN3 and PRL genes, two types of alleles (A and B) and three types of genotypes (AA, BB, and AB) were observed. The highest frequencies for CSN3-A and CSN3-B alleles were estimated for the EAR breed (0.743) and for the BS breed (0.556), respectively. The highest frequency for PRL-A and PRL-B alleles was estimated for the SIM breed (0.801) and for the BS breed (0.315), respectively. The Chi-square test among the investigated cattle breeds showed that only the Zavot breed was in Hardy-Weinberg equilibrium (HWE) for both loci.