Beef and dairy producers in the united states lose billions of dollars every year to pregnancies that fail in the first two weeks after breeding, often before a producer knows a COW was pregnant at all

The Department of Agriculture National Institute of Food and Agriculture awarded Oklahoma State University $300,000 on September 15, 2026, under the Agriculture and Food Research Initiative (AFRI) to identify imprinted genes in cattle embryos during early pregnancy and map their parent-of-origin-dependent activity across developmental stages.

The project addresses early pregnancy failure in beef and dairy cattle, which costs producers billions annually. The research will breed Angus females to a Brahman bull to trace paternal and maternal gene copies, then collect embryos at four early developmental stages to measure gene expression in individual cells, examine DNA chemical marks controlling gene activity, and map gene activity distribution across the embryo. The deliverable is a detailed catalog of parent-of-origin gene activity during early cattle pregnancy and spatial mapping showing which embryo regions depend on paternally and maternally inherited genes. This work fills a gap in understanding why early bovine pregnancies fail; fewer than 50 imprinted genes have been confirmed in cattle compared with more than 150 in humans and mice.

Performance occurs in Stillwater, Oklahoma, with a period of performance from September 15, 2026, through September 14, 2028. AFRI is a competitive research grants program supporting investigations in plant health and production, animal health and production, food safety and nutrition, bioenergy and natural resources, agriculture systems and technology, and rural economics. The assistance type is a project grant.

Most of this loss happens while the young embryo is growing rapidly inside the uterus and signaling to the COW that she is pregnant, but scientists still understand very little about how genes are switched on and off during this short window. One process that may influence this early development is genomic imprinting, in which a gene is active only when IT is inherited from the father, or only when IT is inherited from the mother, rather than from both parents equally. Our understanding of imprinting in cattle is very limited: fewer than 50 imprinted genes have been confirmed in cattle, compared with more than 150 in humans and mice, so this remains a large GAP in what we know about how a calf begins to develop. The goal of this project is to identify the genes whose activity in the early cattle embryo depends on which parent they were inherited from, and to determine when and where in the embryo those genes are active. To do this, we will breed angus females to a brahman bull. These two types of cattle are genetically different enough that we can trace each copy of a gene back to either the sire (the father) or the DAM (the mother). We will collect embryos at four early stages of development, measure which genes are turned on in individual cells, examine the chemical marks on the DNA that control whether a gene can be switched on, and map the location of gene activity across the embryo. We expect to produce the first detailed catalog of parent-of-origin gene activity during early cattle pregnancy, along with a map showing which parts of the embryo rely on genes inherited from the sire and which rely on genes inherited from the DAM. This information will fill a critical GAP in the scientific foundation needed to understand why so many early pregnancies fail, and IT will give future researchers and breeding companies a starting point for including parent-of-origin effects in genetic selection. Because a single elite bull can sire thousands of calves through artificial insemination, identifying paternally expressed genes that are essential for embryo survival could eventually help producers select sires whose calves are more likely to survive the earliest and most vulnerable stage of pregnancy.