A scientific breakthrough was achieved by researchers in the filed of animal genetics, namely: the decoding of the genome of the cow. This basically provides researchers in that field with “tantalizing clues to explain ‘the essence of bovinity.’“

 

It took a team of 300 researchers six years to decode the genetic sequence of "L1 Dominette 01449," a Hereford cow at a research farm on the outskirts of Miles City, Mont. The findings of the researchers led by the National Institutes of Health and the U.S. Department of Agriculture are being published in the Friday edition of the journal Science and a number of other scientific journals. 

 

This decoding, which marks a milestone in this field, will most likely help researchers improve the quality of beef products in the future. It can be used to find better ways of preventing disease amid cattle and for better ways of treating it. 

 

The study took six years, involved 300 researchers from 25 countries, cost $53 million and will surely have a very positive impact on the $49 billion US cattle industry. The study also involved comparing the genome of the cow with the human genome, to that of the mouse, dog, rat opossum and platypus. 

 

Among the discoveries was the fact that the cow has 22,000 genes, more that the 20,000 of humans. About 80% of the cow’s genes are the same as in humans and the chromosome structure in cows is more similar to that of humans that to rats or mice.