Identification and association of novel lncRNA pouMU1 gene mutations with chicken performance traits

Abstract

The biological functions of long noncoding RNAs (lncRNAs), which play an important role in regulating development and gene expression, may be affected by variations in lncRNA gene loci or associated genomic sequences. However, the functions of many lncRNAs remain unknown. To analyse correlations between mutations in pouMU1 with chicken growth and carcass traits, 860 chickens from a Gushi×Anka F2 resource population and 96 Lushi, Xichuan, Changshun and recessive white chickens were used to evaluate the genetic effect of the pouMU1 gene. We performed quantitative real-time polymerase chain reaction (qRT-PCR) to analyse the relative expression levels of pouMU1 in nine different tissues and stages of development. pouMU1 expression was highest in pectoralis and leg muscles, whereas no expression was observed in the heart, liver and abdominal fat. Using direct sequencing and polymerase chain reaction-restriction fragment length polymorphism (PCR-RFLP) methods, two novel sequence mutations (g.1198A>G and g.1238-1239del/insGA) were detected in the pouMU1 gene. SPSS software was used for statistical analysis in association studies. Based on the association data, the presence of both variants was significantly associated with leg muscle fibre width and leg muscle fibre roundness (P < 0.05) and highly associated with leg muscle fibre girth and body weight at 0 week of age (P < 0.01). These data suggest that pouMU1 might participate in regulating chicken muscle development and growth, and the findings offer new insight into the functions of sequence mutations in lncRNAs.

Regulatory Mechanism and Application of lncRNAs in Poultry

“…Two mutations of g. 1198A>G and g. 1238-1239del/insGA combination in pouMU1 showed significant associations with leg muscle fiber width and leg muscle fiber roundness, and highly significant associations with leg muscle fiber girth and BW0. These results suggest that the pouMU1 gene may play an important role in early stage muscle development in chickens [32]. lncRNA-Six generated a micropeptide of about 7.…”

“…Although many of the functions and mechanisms of lncRNAs are still unclear, some of the mechanisms of lncRNAs that have been studied earlier have been fully elucidated. lncRNA has been reported to be involved in cell differentiation and proliferation, growth and development, and organ formation, immune response and tumorigenesis and other important regulatory processes [32].…”

Novel 61-BP Indel of the RIN2 Gene is Significantly Associated with Chicken Growth and Carcass Traits

“…where is the observed value, is the overall average, is the genotype fixed effect, is the family fixed effect, is the gender fixed effect, is the hatching fixed effect, is the carcass weight regression coefficient, is the average slaughter weight, for individual slaughter weight, is random error. P-value < 0.05 was considered significant, and a Bonferroni's test was performed to control multiple comparisons [19]. Model I is used to assess genotypes related to growth traits, meat quality, and blood biochemical indicators.…”

Detection and Utility of Genetic Variation in Chinese Local Chicken Breeds

“…population [27,[29][30][31][32][33][34][35][36][37][38]. The SNPs of candidate genes in the F2 population [39][40][41][42][43][44][45] are summarized in Table 1.…”