Phenotypes

This was one of the first inherited lysosomal storage disorders to be studied extensively in animals. The pioneering work was done by Jolly and colleagues at Massy University in New Zealand, who developed an enzyme assay that enabled carriers to be distinguished from homozygote normals with a high degree of accuracy (Jolly et al., 1973). More than twenty years later, following the cloning and characterisation of the human gene for alpha mannos...

Abbitt et al. (1991) reported that bovine beta-mannosidosis, a lysosomal storage disease, is caused by a deficiency of beta-mannosidase. Affected neonatal calves are unable to rise with intention tremors, hidebound skin, slightly domed calvaria, slight prognathism, and narrow palpebral fissures. Their postmortem findings included variable dilatation of the lateral cerebral ventricles, marked pallor and paucity of white matter of the cerebrum a...

Besser et al. (1990) reported a congenital syndrome of long, thin limbs, severe joint and tendon laxity, microspherophakia, ectopia lentis, heart murmurs and aortic dilatation in 7 calves, where all sired by a single phenotypically normal bull suspected of germline mosaicism for a new mutation resulting in this disease. One of the calves died with ruptured aorta at age 16 months. Histopathologic and electron microscopic studies of the aortic m...

Jacinto et al. (2025) investigated two aborted half-sib Stabiliser calves with osteogenesis imperfecta. Whole genome sequencing identified a likely "heterozygous missense variant in exon 21 of [the functional candidate gene] COL1A2, located in the triple-helical region (Chr4:g.11792118G > A; c.1156G > A; p.Gly386Arg) [omia.variant:1837]. ... The variant may be a de novo mutation inherited from a germinal mosaic sire."

The report of the use of a DNA genotyping test by Healy et al. (1995), citing a personal communication from G.S. Johnson at the University of Missouri, implied that the molecular basis of this disorder within the gene for ferrochelatase had been determined by Dr Johnson. Jenkins et al. (1998) appear to have been the first to publicly report the molecular basis of this disorder. They did so by cloning and sequencing a very likely comparative ca...

In a neat piece of comparative detective work, Lunden et al. (2002; Genome Research 12:1885-1888) investigated whether the fishy off-flavour occasionally reported in cow's milk could be an animal model of fish-odor syndrome in humans, an inborn error of metabolism characterised by a fishy body odor, and known to be due to mutations in the gene for flavin-containing mono-oxygenase 3 (FMO3). They were able to show that this is, indeed, the case:...

Cloning and sequencing of the bovine gene encoding molybdopterin cofactor sulfurase (MCSU, now called MOCOS) in normal and affected cattle, by Watanabe et al. (2000), revealed the causal mutation to be a 3bp deletion (c.769_771delTAC) of codon 257 (deleting Tyr) in the MOCOS gene (omia.variant:446). Murgiano et al. (2016) discovered a different mutation in the MUCOS gene as the likely cause in Tyrolean Grey cattle: "1 bp deletion in the molybd...