Degree of Bengalness: A Measure of the Genomic Contribution of Asian Leopard Cats into Bengal Breed Cats

The Bengal cat breed results from hybridizing domestic cats and Asian Leopard Cats (ALC.  Hybrids can be further crossed to domestic cats and be considered Bengal cats as long as the desired hybrid phenotypes are retained.  While the phenotype is similar within the breed, cats have various degrees of genomic contribution from the ALC.  To test the proportion of ALC genome in different Bengal cats, we adopted the following strategy: (1) identify SNP markers that exhibit different alleles in the ALC and the domestic cats, (2) establish ranges of ALC genomic contribution in the cats from a multi-generation pedigree obtained by several crosses between ALC and domestic cats, and (3) use known proportions of shared ALC genomic from known crosses to test the degree of ALC contribution in Bengal cats of unknown pedigree information.  To achieve the objectives, we used a dataset of over 2000 cats genotyped using 63K Feline SNP array.  The dataset includes ALC cats (n=9), domestic cats from over 35 breeds (n = 1973), domestic-ALC pedigree crosses (n = 81), and random Bengal cats (n = 98).  Over 800, evenly distributed SNPs were found to be discriminatory between ALC and domestic cats.  The remaining objectives are under investigation.  The significance of the study may extend beyond the assessments of degree of “Bengalness” in domestic Bengal cats. In fact the panel of markers used to establish the level of wild hybridization between the two species can also provide information regarding the conservation genetics of the Asian Leopard cat.