Epi-AfriSuidae — Unveiling the diversity of African pigs and wild suids through epigenetics
African Swine Fever kills almost every domestic pig it infects. Warthogs and bushpigs carry the virus and barely notice it. Between those two extremes live Africa's indigenous pigs: vulnerable to ASF, yet tolerant of a range of endemic parasitic and infectious diseases that would floor a commercial breed. The genetic basis of that tolerance is unknown. In Angola and Mozambique most pigs are kept in extensive, semi-feral systems at the edge of wild habitat, where they encounter warthogs and bushpigs. Hybridisation between wild and domestic suids has long been suspected, and would offer an obvious route for resistance alleles to cross over. It has never been demonstrated. Epi-AfriSuidae approaches this through both the genome and the epigenome. Angola holds seven of Africa's nine biomes and Mozambique five, which makes these populations a natural experiment in adaptation — and DNA methylation records the part of that adaptation that sequence alone does not.
The project aims to:
1. Characterise indigenous African pig populations at genetic and epigenetic level, combining whole-genome sequencing with reduced representation bisulfite sequencing. 2. Characterise warthog (Phacochoerus africanus) and bushpig (Potamochoerus larvatus) populations in Angola and Mozambique at cytogenetic and whole-genome level. 3. Test whether hybridisation occurs between wild and domestic suids, and whether it has introduced alleles associated with disease resistance. 4. Build capacity in genomic analysis in Portuguese-speaking African countries.
Investigation Team:
Principal Investigator
Andreia de Jesus Amaral Gomes Barbosa Fonseca (UÉVORA, Portugal)
Members
Fábio Teixeira (UEVORA, Portugal) , PhD candidate
José Alexandre da Costa Perdigão e Cameira Leitão (ULISBOA, Portugal)
José Manuel Moras Cordeiro (UJES, Angola)
Hermenegildo Chiaia (UJES, Angola)
Kiala Sebastino (IIV, Angola),
Joaquim Gaspar (UJES, Angola)
Pedro Roberto Afonso (UJES, Angola)
Funding FCT 2023.15455.PEX