Dear Colleagues,

Tens of thousands of years of wild animal domestication, natural selection, and artificial selection have led to the emergence of the livestock species we have all over the world today. With the improvement of genetic theories, conventional animal breeding techniques have developed from general phenotypic selection to the use of genetic methods to estimate breeding values. Moreover, great contributions have been made to the genetic improvement of livestock in the past few decades. Since the 1980s, the appearance of various molecular genetic markers and the development of modern biotechnology have provided new methods for improving animal genetic breeding. The integration of various omics information—such as DNA, RNA, protein, and epigenetic regulation—brings new opportunities for the mining of important economic traits of animals and the analysis of molecular genetic mechanisms. Functional genes can be mined and screened from different levels (including circRNA, lincRNA–miRNA, and mRNA) and perspectives by obtaining information on the genome, transcriptome, proteome, epigenome, and metagenome. In this way, gene networks and regulatory pathways can be studied more efficiently, thus laying a solid foundation for analysing the mechanisms of functional genes.

Over the last three decades, world milk production has increased by more than 59%, from 530 million tonnes to 843 million tonnes. Yet the genetic mechanisms behind milk fat traits remain largely undetermined. Milk is rich in fatty acids, proteins, and eight essential amino acids needed by the human body. The fatty acids in milk, namely, dodecylic acid, myristic acid, stearic acid, and palmitic acid, are the main energy substances in the human body, accounting for approximately 5, 10, 8, and 27% of the total fatty acids, respectively. Thus, decoding the genetics of milk fat traits can have a potential impact on product development, international trade, and consumption of milk components. This Special Issue will focus on applying the aforementioned advances to explore gene regulation and its molecular mechanisms in milk fat traits.

We would like to welcome investigators in relevant fields to contribute original research, reviews, and method articles. Potential subtopics of interest include, but are not limited to:

• Research and application surrounding the genetic basis of important milk fat traits;
• Mining and function of excellent genetic resources for milk fat traits;
• Genetics of nutrition metabolism regulation and efficient production of milk fat;
• Epigenetic research on genes implicated in milk fat traits;
• High-throughput sequencing research surrounding genetics of milk fat traits;
• Construction of gene (including circRNA, lincRNA–miRNA, and mRNA) expression regulatory network maps.

Dr. Zhi Chen
Dr. Cong Li
Guest Editors

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• milk fat traits
• gene regulation network construction
• gene expression
• epigenetic
• circRNA
• lincRNA–miRNA
• mRNA