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 workfocuses on a local Southern Italy cattle, namely Italian Podolic. We provide the complete structural characterisation ofa-lactalbumins and b-globin chains isolated from Podolic cattle (Bos taurus). Given the unavailability of the completesequence for a-lactalbumin A of taurine cattle in the literature, we intended to check its structure in order to ascertainthe absence of any possible silent mutation. Screening the Podolic cattle, we found a new b-globin variant not detectableby conventional methods. The presence of such a new variant might be helpful in the study of the Podolic populationgenetic structure and for a better knowledge of the gene pool per se, and in comparison with the other breeds. Structuralanalyses showed that the new b-globin Podolic variant exhibited the same sequence as b-globin Azebu. The a-lactalbuminA was the same as that isolated from zebu cattle (Bos indicus). The results are discussed in relation to the possibleinvolvement of the two markers in the debate on the origin of the Podolic breed. © 2000 Elsevier Science Inc. All rightsreserved.