Identical marker alleles in podolic cattle (bos taurus) and indian zebù (bos indicus).

In the context of biochemical marker research and in order to add new information on native breeds, the present work focuses on a local Southern Italy cattle, namely Italian Podolic. We provide the complete structural characterisation of a-lactalbumins and b-globin chains isolated from Podolic cattle (Bos taurus). Given the unavailability of the complete sequence for a-lactalbumin A of taurine cattle in the literature, we intended to check its structure in order to ascertain the absence of any possible silent mutation. Screening the Podolic cattle, we found a new b-globin variant not detectable by conventional methods. The presence of such a new variant might be helpful in the study of the Podolic population genetic structure and for a better knowledge of the gene pool per se, and in comparison with the other breeds. Structural analyses showed that the new b-globin Podolic variant exhibited the same sequence as b-globin Azebu. The a-lactalbumin A was the same as that isolated from zebu cattle (Bos indicus). The results are discussed in relation to the possible involvement of the two markers in the debate on the origin of the Podolic breed. © 2000 Elsevier Science Inc. All rights reserved.