Genetic History
A 2003 study of mitochondrial DNA indicated four distinct maternal lineages in tribe Bovini:
- taurine cattle and zebu,
- wisent,
- American bison and yak, and
- banteng, gaur, and gayal.
However, Y chromosome analysis associated wisent and American bison. An earlier study using amplified fragment length polymorphism (AFLP) fingerprinting showed a close association of wisent and American bison and probably with yak, but noted that the interbreeding of Bovini species made determining relationships problematic.
Wisent-American bison hybrids were briefly experimented with in Germany and a herd of such animals is maintained in Russia. A herd of cattle-wisent crossbreeds (Zubron) is maintained in Poland. First-generation crosses do not occur naturally, requiring caesarean delivery. First-generation males are infertile.
Read more about this topic: European Bison
Famous quotes containing the words genetic and/or history:
“Man is not merely the sum of his masks. Behind the shifting face of personality is a hard nugget of self, a genetic gift.... The self is malleable but elastic, snapping back to its original shape like a rubber band. Mental illness is no myth, as some have claimed. It is a disturbance in our sense of possession of a stable inner self that survives its personae.”
—Camille Paglia (b. 1947)
“The reverence for the Scriptures is an element of civilization, for thus has the history of the world been preserved, and is preserved.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)