Establishment of an individual identification system based on microsatellite polymorphisms in Korean Cattle (Hanwoo)

This study was conducted to establish an individual identification system comprising of 19 microsatellite markers located on different bovine autosomes. The markers were typed on 257 animals from five cattle breeds. In total, 112 alleles were detected from the genotyping of 19 microsatellite markers. The average heterozygosities ranged from 0.292 to 0.824 and the polymorphic information content (PIC) ranged from 0.274 to 0.817 in Hanwoo. We found that there were differences in allele frequencies in Hanwoo when compared with other cattle breeds. The calculated cumulative power of discrimination (CPD) was 99.999% when nine microsatellite loci were used for analysis in the individual identification system. Also the matching probability, the probability that two unrelated animals would show the same genotypes, was estimated to be 0.44×10^-9. Therefore, the nine markers used in this study will be used for individual identification in two million Hanwoo individuals.