Analysis of single nucleotide polymorphisms variation associated with important economic and computed tomography measured traits in Texel sheep

Abstract

Sheep are an important part of the global agricultural economy. Growth and meat production traits are significant economic traits in sheep. The Texel breed is the most popular terminal sire breed in the UK, mainly selected for muscle growth and lean carcasses. This is a study based on a genome-wide association approach that investigates the links between some economically important traits, including computed tomography (CT) measurements, and molecular polymorphisms in UK Texel sheep. Our main aim was to identify single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNP) associated with growth, carcass, health and welfare traits of the Texel sheep breed. This study used data from 384 Texel rams. Data comprised ten traits, including two CT measured traits. The phenotypic data were placed in four categories: growth traits, carcass traits, health traits and welfare traits. De-regressed estimated breeding values (EBV) for these traits together with sire genotypes derived with the Ovine 50 K SNP array of Illumina were jointly analysed in a genome wide association analysis. Eight novel chromosome-wise significant associations were found for carcass, growth, health and welfare traits. Three significant markers were intronic variants and the remainder intergenic variants. This study is a first step to search for genomic regions controlling CT-based productivity traits related to body and carcass composition in a terminal sire sheep breed using a 50 K SNP genome-wide array. Results are important for the further development of strategies to identify causal variants associated with CT measures and other commercial traits in sheep. Independent studies are needed to confirm these results and identify candidate genes for the studied traits.

Genome‐wide association study and inbreeding depression on body size traits in Qira black sheep (Ovis aries)

“…2020); 8‐week weight of Texel sheep (Garza Hernandez et al . 2018); post‐weaning weight of Australian Merino sheep (Al‐Mamun et al . 2015); 6‐month weight of Hulun Buir sheep (Zhang et al .…”

Genome-wide analyses reveal a strong association between LEPR gene variants and body fat reserves in ewes

“…As far as we know, this is the first study on ruminants that maps QTLs for BR levels at several key physiological stages and BR changes over time in ewes. Indeed, many QTLs have been previously found for conformation traits and carcass fatness in sheep (WALLING et al 2004;MATIKA et al 2016;GARZA HERNANDEZ et al 2018;HU et al 2018), but not yet for BR traits in live productive ewes. In the present study, we were not only interested in BR levels assessed through body condition score (BCS) but also in body reserve dynamics (BRD) assessed through BCS changes over time (i.e., between physiological stages).…”

“…2005; M atika et al . 2016; G arza Hernandez et al . 2018), no such studies have been undertaken for BR phenotypes on live productive females.…”

Recent advances in understanding genetic variants associated with growth, carcass and meat productivity traits in sheep (<i>Ovis aries</i>): an update

“…S3) that led to the final list of 18 publications. Nine of them described GWAS analysis (Riggio et al, 2013;Zhang et al, 2013;Al-Mamun et al, 2015;Bolormaa et al, 2016;Matika et al, 2016;Kominakis et al, 2017;Garza Hernandez et al, 2018;Pasandideh et al, 2018;Ghasemi et al, 2019), seven described gene candidate analysis (Jalil-Sarghale et al, 2014;Cinar et al, 2016;Trukhachev et al, 2016;Zhang et al, 2016;Aali et al, 2017;Armstrong et al, 2018) and two were reviews (Sahu et al, 2017;Xu and Li, 2017) (Table ST3).…”