Associations between gene polymorphisms in two crucial metabolic pathways and growth traits in pigs

Abstract

Propanoate metabolism and fatty acid metabolism are crucial metabolic pathways in vivo that have been studied extensively and have shown a significant influence on the growth and diseases of animals. In order to identify the essential genes significantly associated with porcine growth traits at the pathway level, we selected 14 candidate genes with 58 SNPs, including 24 tag SNPs and 34 predicted SNPs, in the two essential pathways to test using the SNaPshot mini-sequencing method. Association analysis was performed using both static and dynamic phenotypic records. The results showed that four SNPs, respectively in SUCLA2, SUCLG2, ACADS, and ALDH1B1, were significantly associated with growth in pigs. In addition, an exciting finding was that the change of transcription factor binding site that resulted from alteration of the bases in SUCLG2 brought out a transcription factor binding site for POU1F1a, which is the product of a notable marker gene for growth of animals. Growth traits, including total feed intake, daily feed intake, feed conversion ratio and daily weight gain, have a direct impact on production efficiency in the swine industry. Studies on the relationship between noted growth-related genes and growth traits have attracted a great deal of attention for decades. Unfortunately, despite the fact that numerous studies have been performed, few of them have demonstrated the nature and mechanism of genetic variation that underlies the quantitative traits. The methods for studying quantitative traits should be reconsidered, because the use of only SNPs as the basic units of association analysis has shown several limitations. The functions of SNPs and genes are usually carried out through intricate pathways of reactions and interactions [1]. Therefore, studies based on the candidate pathways approach may not only provide us with the possibility to gain more extensive insight into the functional basis of association but also facilitate and unravel the detailed genetic control mechanisms of complex phenotypes. Previous study in our laboratory has shown that the propanoate and fatty acid metabolic pathways exhibit significant down-regulation under PPARα knockout conditions in the livers of mice, which was detected by the analysis of mouse PPARα dependent or independent datasets by GSEA (Gene Set Enrichment Analysis) [2]. The propanoate and fatty acid metabolic processes are crucial metabolic pathways in vivo, and may be connected with the TCA (tricarboxylic acid cycle) cycle. Metabolism of fatty acids is essential for the organism because they are a major source of energy and the structural components of membranes. In addition, a variety of fatty acids perform key biological functions such as the regulation of lipid metabolism, cell division and inflammation [3][4][5]. The metabolism of propanoate (propionic acid) begins with its conversion to propionyl coenzyme A (propionyl-CoA), which is usually the first step in the metabolism of carboxylic acids. The regulatory mechanisms of the propanoate and fatty acid met...

Influence of Delipation on the Energy Metabolism in Pig Parthenogenetically Activated Embryos

“…) and Acaa2 (Yang et al. ) genes in delipated embryos also explained a lower production of ATP after delipation. On the other hand, the increased expression of Glut1 gene was also observed in porcine embryos after FAO inhibition, suggesting that alternate energy pathways were upregulated when FAO was blocked (Paczkowski et al.…”

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