Dairy cows experience stress like the average person - and MSU agriculture researchers were able to milk $2.8 million from the Initiative for Future Agriculture and Food Systems to study the effects of stress on farmers’ bovines at the genetic level.
“We’ve identified over 18,000 unique genes in cattle and we have those on hand right now,” said Paul Coussens, director of the MSU Center for Animal Functional Genomics.
Coussens is the primary investigator in the set of studies. Using new equipment developed in the center, researchers on Coussens’ team can examine all 18,263 identified bovine genes to search for the characteristics that will provide answers to their questions.
“We can actually do what we wanted to do for a long time now with this equipment,” animal science Assistant Professor Jeanne Burton said. “I think it makes some of my colleagues jealous.”
Burton’s research involves investigating the effects of high stress situations such as giving birth. When many species - including humans - give birth, their immune systems weaken and they become more susceptible to disease.
MSU researchers are putting their findings into a national genomics database on the Internet that anybody can use to enhance their own research.
“It gets thousands of hits from all over the world every month, from people who are looking up genes to find out what they do,” Coussens said. “I think that was one of the strong positives in us getting this grant was that the university had the foresight to invest in that technology.”
