The report of SWFS 2017 conference
Yuki Matsumoto
Mouse genomics resource laboratory, D5
The Society for Wildlife Forensic Science (SWFS) 2017 meeting has held at theEdinburgh University's John McIntyre Conference Centre, Edinburgh, Scotland during
5-9th June. The SWFS is a society related to forensic science and conservation biology
for wild and captive animals. I am interested in the application using my findings fortameness in mice to the conservation biology of wild animals. In the conference, 220
researchers and politicians from over 30 countries attend the meeting. I have discussedwith many researches who work at the field of conservation biology and it was a chance
to consider how I can apply our findings of tameness in mice to the conservation biology.
Overall, I enjoyed discussions with researchers attended the meeting and many excitingpresentations by them.
In my project, I have been analyzing a genetically heterogeneous mouse populationand selective breeding mediated genetic mapping for tameness. I have been analyzed theselective pressure in mouse genome via the selective breeding for tameness. The mousestock I used is Wild-derived heterogeneous stock which has been made by crossing eightwild strains originated from various place in the world, including Mus musculus

musculus, M. m. domesticus, M. m. castaneus subspecies. I performed selective breeding
for active tameness, one type of tameness (another tameness is passive tameness). As aresult of selective breeding, I successfully made a mouse population in which mice
exhibit high level of tameness. As a next step, I conducted genomic analysis to detectselected locus where selective sweep (the reduction or elimination of variation among thenucleotides in neighboring DNA of a mutation) could be observed. I utilized a simulation
to detect the sweep via the estimation maximum allele frequency by using a simulation
with non-selection model. After the analyses, I found two candidate selected loci from
MSM strain, one of the founder strain of Mus musculus musculus subspecies, which issignificantly increased in allele frequency compared to the estimated maximum allele
frequency. Additionally, by using an association analysis between phenotype and thenumber of MSM haplotype, I confirmed the region with significant association within theselected loci. Furthermore, using the messenger RNA sequencing, RNA-seq, I try tonarrowing down of the candidate genes related to active tameness.
I presented these results in a poster presentation in the meeting. The poster title
was “Two genetic loci associated with tame behaviour in mice and its effect on dogs”. Inthe presentation, especially I
focused on the application to thewildlife conservation using myresearch project. Attending theconference was usefulexperience to me because it
stimulated my idea via thepresentation and discussions
with researchers who majoredin conservation biology andhelped to deepen my understanding for behavioral genetics contributing theconservation biology.
Not relating to conservation biology, but I note that the most exciting discussion
was about the Greater cane rat (also called grasscutters), which is a large sized rodents
in Ghana, Africa. I discussed with a researcher who research about the novel
domestication for grasscutters in Ghana. Meat resources are poorly avairable in Ghana,but recently novel domestication of the grasscutters have been performed for production
as a meat. I have considered that my research project potentially applly to thegrasscutters project. This is because the candidate gene or genetic region associated withtameness found in my research might be allowed us to select a tame animal in thecaptive grasscutters population. In the future I will applied my project to the grasscutter
domestication.