Kazakh national dog breed Tazy: What do we know?

Anastassiya Perfilyeva; Kira Bespalova; Sergey Bespalov; Мamura Begmanova; Yelena Kuzovleva; Zhassulan Zhaniyazov; Olga Vishnyakova; Inna Nazarenko; Yuliya Perfilyeva; Ozada Khamdiyeva; Bakhytzhan Bekmanov

doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0282041

Kazakh national dog breed Tazy: What do we know?

PLoS One. 2023 Mar 8;18(3):e0282041. doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0282041. eCollection 2023.

Authors

Affiliations

¹ Department of Molecular Genetics, Institute of Genetics and Physiology, Almaty, Kazakhstan.
² Department of Biology and Biotechnology, Al-Farabi Kazakh National University, Almaty, Kazakhstan.
³ Department of Theriology, Institute of Zoology, Almaty, Kazakhstan.
⁴ Department of Сynology, Republican Federation of Public Associations of Hunters and Hunting Societies "Kansonar", Almaty, Kazakhstan.
⁵ Department of Сynology, Republican Federation of Public Associations of Hunters and Hunting Societies "Kansonar", Astana, Kazakhstan.
⁶ Department of Immunology, M.A. Aitkhozhin's Institute of Molecular Biology and Biochemistry, Almaty, Kazakhstan.

Abstract

The Tazy or Kazakh National sighthound has been officially recognized as the national heritage of Kazakhstan. Comprehensive genetic studies of genetic diversity and population structure that could be used for selection and conservation of this unique dog breed have not been conducted so far. The aim of this study was to determine the genetic structure of the Tazy using microsatellite and SNP markers and to place the breed in the context of the world sighthound breeds. Our results showed that all 19 microsatellite loci examined were polymorphic. The observed number of alleles in the Tazy population varied from 6 (INU030 locus) to 12 (AHT137, REN169D01, AHTh260, AHT121, and FH2054 loci) with a mean of 9.778 alleles per locus. The mean number of effective alleles was 4.869 and ranged from 3.349 f to 4.841. All markers were highly informative (PIC values greater than 0.5) and ranged from 0.543 (REN247M23 locus) to 0.865 (AHT121 locus). The observed and expected heterozygosities in a total population were 0.748 and 0.769 and ranged from 0.746 to 0.750 and 0.656 to 0.769, respectively. Overall, the results confirmed that the Tazy breed has a high level of genetic diversity, no significant inbreeding, and a specific genetic structure. Three gene pools underlie the genetic diversity of the Tazy breed. SNP analysis using the CanineHD SNP array, which contains more than 170,000 SNP markers, showed that the Tazy breed is distinct from other sighthound breeds and genetically related to ancient eastern sighthound breeds sharing the same branch with the Afghan Hound and the Saluki. The results, together with archeological findings, confirm the ancient origin of the breed. The findings can be used for the conservation and international registration of the Tazy dog breed.

Copyright: © 2023 Perfilyeva et al. This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.

Publication types

Research Support, Non-U.S. Gov't

MeSH terms

Alleles
Animals
Dogs
Gene Pool
Genetic Variation*
Heterozygote
Inbreeding*
Microsatellite Repeats / genetics

Grants and funding

This research was funded by the Committee of Science of the Ministry of Education and Science of the Republic of Kazakhstan (# AP09258895, 2021-2023). The funders had no role in study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish or preparation of the manuscript. There was no additional external funding received for this study.