Individual genome sequencing of livestock animals - en route to genomic selection 2.0

Since reference genome sequences of livestock species have become available few years ago, animal selection methodology is changing at an unexpected rate. Predicting breeding values on the basis of anonymous quantitative trait loci (QTL) tagged by densely spaced markers instead of (or supplementary to) progeny testing is widely applied in dairy cattle. We dub this approach to genomic animal improvement as "genomic selection 1.0". The rapid developments of sequencing technologies now enable sequencing of numerous individuals and open new avenues to the systematic identification of DNA variants that affect quantitative traits, so called quantitative trait nucleotides (QTN). QTN will be explored mainly within QTL with large effects (very important QTL, viQTL). The explicit consideration of QTL within viQTL is the main feature of "genomic selection 2.0", which will be particularly important to improving health traits by means of selection.