INTRODUCTION:

Single nucleotide polymorphism occurs in a subset of individuals of a

population in which the sequence of a gene differs by only one nucleotide.
So, a gene can have many variations in the same species only by a difference
of one nucleotide. This means due to the variations similar but sequence
wise different, various proteins are created. This would affect the trait
encoded by the gene. The traits can be of many types for ex: degree of skin
color, hair color, susceptibility to disease; in the case of animals this could
mean various meat composition, milk composition and quality etc.
Milk contains various types of proteins. Casein is the major form of proteins
found in milk that have many types. The major types include alpha-casein,
beta-casein and kappa-casein.A rare form of milk protein is beta-
lactoglobulin. As part of my internship project, my work was to conduct
genomic DNA Isolation from cow blood then perform PCR-RFLP to
distinguish the polymorphisms of beta-casein.

Beta casein is the most polymorphic gene known to have 13 variants.

Various studies have indicated the association of beta casein polymorphism
with economically important traits in livestock. Beta-casein has two major
forms, A1 and A2. The A1 form of the gene encodes histidine at position 67
while the A2 form of the gene encodes a proline. A2 has been shown to
promote better health and has been termed as premium milk while A1 milk
has shown to have adverse physiological effects. Also, kappa casein has
shown to play a role in curd firming rate and milk coagulation.

Thus, to assess the association of these milk proteins with milk traits like
protein content, fat content, cheese composition, curd firming rate etc the
following work was done. Due to time constraints, I was only able to
perform till PCR and DNA band purification. However, I have done two
kinds of PCR. The first one was allele specific PCR to distinguish between
A1 and A2 beta-casein and the second kind of PCR was done using
McLachlan primers.