DNA Basics

How Samples are used

The samples are used for different research depending on the needs of the lab. One of the most important uses is the genome mapping project being conducted by the USMARC at Clay Center, Nebraska. The USMARC develops the protocol that make it possible to accurately test different breeds of animals.

If there are no samples there can be no research. Therefore, the breeds that participate the most in these studies inevitably have more research done by more labs and agencies.

How samples are prepared

First off, the material that is tested must be tissue or blood. If you pull hair to send to the lab most of it is thrown away. The only part that is used is the follicles or tags at the end of the hair. This is why the hair can not be cut but has to be pulled.

Getting good samples does not mean the animal can not be dead. It only means the sample has to be preserved in a state that will allow the scientist to extract the DNA. If you send in a blood sample that has been frozen you have preserved it.

Semen that has thawed can still be extracted for DNA even though the cells are dead. In fact, most samples are shipped on ice and not frozen to cryogenic state. Of course, this semen could not be used to breed cattle but it is fine for DNA.

Once the sample is received in the lab the process of extracting DNA begins. Most of the process involves cleaning the material in many repetitive steps in order to get the actual DNA with no impurities. This is the most time consuming and critical part of the process.

Once the sample has been extracted a test for purity is done. This test tells the lab personnel if the material that has been extracted has enough DNA to run further tests. If not, the process starts over with new samples.

After all this effort the sample is ready to be tested. The extracted DNA is put into a sequencer which basically does everything automatically. The results are then deciphered to find the answer the customer needs, like parentage, tenderness, etc.

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What can be done now...

Many carcass trait tests have been developed but so far not all breeds can benefit. More research will be needed before this test is uniformly accurate.

What can not be done... YET.

It is not currently possible to get exact parentage or other information on every breed. If the breed has not been cataloged and tested through the USMARC there is little chance that an exact protocol will exist for extracting and testing DNA from that animal. The USMARC develops the tests for each breed individually and makes it possible for other labs to use their research. Without this research there is no specific test. If a sample is sent to a lab that doesn't have a specific protocol there may be problems because another breeds protocol has to be used. Since all breeds are different there is always a margin of error.

This is why I have been traveling all over the US. Each time I send in samples for a breed, another set of protocols is built and the testing becomes more reliable.

There is currently no test that will give a reliable measure of how an animal will perform in the years to come. Science is quickly getting to this point but as of today there are too many variables that make it unlikely that any such tests are valid.

As a rancher I would love to have a test that tells me how well an animal will gain weight or if it will be fertile before I register it with the breed association and spend a lot of time and money.

I would like to pull blood at birth and find out how fast it will grow, what type of conformation it will have, and how close to the perfect animal it will be.

 Unfortunately, this isn't possible... yet. 

As of now there isn't enough basic knowledge of all the breeds that would let scientist develop a test like this. Once all the basic info is collected there will be opportunities to develop a test that will work for the rancher in this way.