Single nucleotide polymorphisms between two lines of European bison (Bison bonasus) detected by the use of Illumina Bovine 50 K BeadChip

The population of European bison is divided into two lines: the Lowland–Bialowieza (LB) and the Lowland–Caucasian (LC). Because of a very high level of inbreeding and the bottleneck effect, the use of routine sets of cattle microsatellite markers does not reveal significant differences between these genetic lines. Within the research we attempted to overcome this limitation by the use of a Single Nucleotide Polymorphisms panel (50 K Bovine BeadChip, Illumina). Genomic DNA was isolated from the blood of 10 European bison (5 LB and 5 LC) of known pedigrees. The total call rate of genotypes was equal to 93.5%. From a total of 54,001 SNPs—only 1,337 were shown to be polymorphic. Significant differences (P < 0.05) between the two lines in allele frequencies were found in 50 markers. Fourteen of them were shown monomorphic in one of the line and polymorphic in the another. The results confirm very low genetic variability of European bison and provide a new tool for finding genetic differences between the two lines.