Location: Genetics and Animal Breeding
Project Number: 3040-31000-104-023-A
Project Type: Cooperative Agreement
Start Date: Jun 1, 2026
End Date: Jun 1, 2030
Objective:
The new funding directly supports Project Plan Objective 2: Develop systems to improve performance through combined genetic and genomic characterization, heterosis, selection and analytical approaches, and enhances Subobjective 2A: Characterize genetic, genomic and phenotypic variance among and within diverse and influential beef cattle populations toward improved sustainable breeding and management decisions; and Sub-objective 2E: Investigate interactions of beef breeds with management systems in diverse environments.
The enhanced research capacity improves the timely discovery, development, and dissemination of research that addresses cattle resilience and sustainability to variation in environmental conditions, supporting cattle ranchers, farmers, and seedstock producers and suppliers. Collaborative research efforts will utilize Artificial Intelligence to evaluate millions of small molecules, identifying candidate molecules that may amplify components of the heat shock protein family and provide a mechanism to reduce heat stress in dairy cattle. Following small molecule evaluation, collaborator research will target development of a low cost, high efficacy nanoparticle delivery mechanism, that following delivery will confer novel heat stress resilience to cattle, improving fertility, welfare, and production efficiency at the farm level.
Approach:
An interdisciplinary strategy will be used to improve the fertility of heat-stressed dairy cattle by accomplishing: 1) AI-screen >500 million compounds for 5-6 small molecules that interact with HSP90 (an inducible heat-resistance protein) and enhance its functions (HSP90 amplifiers), this research will also increase the potency of lead candidates by chemical modifications or direct synthesis; 2) determine the cytotoxicity of the lead compounds/analogs using granulosa cells from non-heat-stressed animals; and 3) determine the effectiveness and minimal doses of HSP90 amplifiers during bovine oocyte in vitro maturation, fertilization and embryo development under control and heat-stressed conditions. Upon successful demonstration, this strategy will be applied to additional targets such as other HSPs and heat-resistance pathways. Future directions will be to determine the in vivo efficacy of the small molecules in heat-stressed lactating cows.