Jingya Li , Mengyue Chen

Animal Science Research Center, Cuixi Academy of Biotechnology, Zhuji, 311800, Zhejiang, China
Author    Correspondence author
Animal Molecular Breeding, 2025, Vol. 15, No. 1   doi: 10.5376/amb.2025.15.0001
Received: 10 Dec., 2024    Accepted: 15 Jan., 2025    Published: 26 Jan., 2025

This is an open access article published under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.

Li J.Y., and Chen M.Y., 2025, The genetic basis of high-altitude adaptation in goats insights from CRISPR-based functional genomics, Animal Molecular Breeding, 15(1): 1-8 (doi: 10.5376/amb.2025.15.0001)

Goats are precious livestock in mountainous regions, subjected to environmental stresses such as hypoxia, cold stress, and excessive ultraviolet radiation. Elucidation of the genetic mechanism of their adaptation to high altitude is needed if molecular breeding and production performance are to be improved under extreme conditions. This study summarizes the physiological characteristics of high-altitude goats including adaptive respiratory, circulatory, immune, and reproductive system adaptation; advances in the identification of candidate adaptive genes by genome-wide association and selective sweep studies; and epigenetics and non-coding RNA functions in adaptive regulation. This study particularly targets using CRISPR/Cas9 technology to facilitate functional verification of key genes and multi-omics integration for the reconstruction of adaptive regulatory networks, and to probe the key molecular mechanisms essential for high-altitude survival such as the HIF signaling pathway and redox balance. The feasibility and limitations of using CRISPR technology in goat genetic innovation are examined for leads in future studies on adaptive breeding under suboptimal environments.

Plateau adaptation; Goats; CRISPR/Cas9; Functional genomics; Hypoxia response