Abstract

The domestic cow, Bos taurus, is not only an established part of human agriculture but with its interesting position in the phylogenetic tree — in a different clade to humans and rodents — it is also favoured in comparative genomics. Two assemblies of the cow genome now provide a valuable resource for both evolutionary genomics and livestock breeding, and analyses of the data (including a Bovine Thematic Series of companion papers) are already providing insights into the evolution of milk production and the genomic impact of domestication and breeding.