FUNCTIONAL MAPPING OF MUSCLE AND FAT SPECIFIC ENHANCERS IN THE BOVINE GENOME BY EPIGENOME EDITING IN EMBRYONIC STEM CELLS

Advancements in genomics have shifted the paradigm of livestock breeding by using high throughput technologies. However, understanding the biological context of markers used in genomic breeding is a major challenge especially due to the intergenic location of the markers (> 80%) associated with complex traits. The overall goal of this project is to understand the biological context of genomic markers in the intergenic regulatory elements (enhancers/promoters) of the muscle and fat since transcriptional regulation such as hormone response, is the major mechanism behind complex traits. An international consortium within the livestock genomics community called FAANG (Functional Annotation of Animal Genomes) has been generating data from multiple tissues that we can take advantage of for this project to identify and annotate tissue specific regulatory elements in muscle and adipose. Once we identify the intergenic regulatory regions in muscle and adipose, we will incorporate the genomic variant marker data from public databases and/or from breeder companies to select the candidate regions to test their functions. We will develop epigenomic modification systems using CRISPR to validate the function of muscle and fat specific regulatory elements we annotated.