Mapping of heterozygosity rich regions in Austrian Pinzgauer cattle

Heterozygosity, the state of possessing different alleles at a given locus of an individual, is functionally related to inbreeding, heterosis and biodiversity. We questioned the appearance of regions with extraordinary high rates of heterozygosity, here “Heterozygosity Rich Regions” (HRR) in the genomes of a cattle population. We used 120 Pinzgauer bulls genotyped with 611102 SNPs and detected 14702 HRR unequally dispersed in the genome. Mean coverage of SNP chip data with HRR was 0.99 %. In total we found 11 regions with high frequency of SNPs being in HRR on nine chromosomes yielding 21 genes of which 17 have described functions. We further identified genes located in HRR and discussed their importance and function. The results of this study point to the analysis of HRR providing additional understanding of the genomes of livestock.