Nucleotide variants in prion-related protein (testis-specific) gene (PRNT) and effects on Chinese and Mongolian sheep phenotypes

Abstract

Studies of the ovine prion-related protein (testis-specific) gene (PRNT), including studies of genetic diversity, have highlighted its potential relationship to scrapie infection and economically important ovine traits. PRNT was previously reported to be highly polymorphic in Portuguese sheep. To characterize genetic polymorphisms in this gene in Asian sheep, a direct sequencing method was used to detect polymorphic loci in PRNT in 285 individual sheep from four Chinese and one Mongolian breeds. Seven SNP variants in PRNT were identified, including three novel variants (g.93G>A, g.162G>T, and g.190A>G) and four previously reported variants (g.17 C>T, g.112G>C, g.129C>T, and g.144A>G). In the five breeds that we analyzed, the mutation frequencies of g.190A>G in Lanzhou Fat-tail sheep (LFTS) and g.129C>T in the other four varieties were high (F>0.5). Moreover, thirteen different haplotypes that had a comparable distribution in the tested breeds were also identified; 'C-G-G-C-A-G-A' occurred at the highest frequency in the five sheep breeds. Additionally, we previously explored the significance of relationships between polymorphisms in PRNP or PRND and ovine growth performance. Here, we also performed correlation analysis in all tested loci. These loci polymorphisms were significantly associated with ten different growth traits (P<0.05), except for g.93G>A. Meanwhile, in contrast to a previous study, there was no significant association between the seven SNP loci analyzed and our previously reported sheep PRND or PRNP insertion/deletion mutations. Our findings may provide new insights into polymorphic variation in ovine PRNT, which may contribute to genetic improvements in economic traits that are important for sheep breeding.

Genetic variations in the sheep &lt;i&gt;SIRT7&lt;/i&gt; gene and their correlation with body size traits

“…Studies of SIRT genes tend to focus on the regulation of the physiological processes of cell stress responses, proliferation, apoptosis, aging, metabolism, and especially on the development of tumors (Li and Kazgan, 2011;Roth and Chen, 2014;O'Callaghan and Vassilopoulos., 2017;Ye et al, 2017). Although, in recent years, SIRT genes have also been shown to regulate the differentiation of adipocytes and myoblasts (Cioffi et al, 2015).…”

“…Silent information regulator 2 (sirtuins2, SIRT2) proteins, which belonging to the class III nicotinamide adenine dinucleotide (NAD)-dependent histone deacetylases and ADP ribosyl transferases, are connected to metabolism and life span regulation in lower organisms and are highly conservative from prokaryotes to eukaryotes (O'Callaghan and Vassilopoulos, 2017). In particular, the mammalian sirtuin proteins have been reported to participate in the regulation of energy metabolism (e.g., sugar and lipid metabolism) (Li and Kazgan, 2011;Ye et al, 2017) and stress (Blank and Grummt, 2017), as well as the maintenance of genomic stability (Bosch-Presegué and Vaquero, 2014), tumor development (Roth and Chen, 2014), cell proliferation, senescence, and apoptosis (O'Callaghan and Vassilopoulos, 2017).…”

Polymorphisms within the Boule Gene Detected by Tetra-Primer Amplification Refractory Mutation System PCR (T-ARMS-PCR) are Significantly Associated with Goat Litter Size

“…DNA samples were isolated from the ear tissues (saved in 70% alcohol at −80 °C) through the method of high salt extraction [25]. The purity of the DNA samples was assayed by a NanoDrop 1000 (Thermo Scientific, Waltham, Massachusetts, MA, USA).…”

“…Furthermore, the associations of the novel SNP of the Boule gene with goat litter size were inspected using the analysis of variance (ANOVA) available in SPSS (Version 18.0) [25], while different genotypes were considered as independent variables, and litter size traits were used as the dependent variable. The results were deemed to be statistically significant when p < 0.05, and all statistical tests were two-sided.…”

Insight into the Possible Formation Mechanism of the Intersex Phenotype of Lanzhou Fat-Tailed Sheep Using Whole-Genome Resequencing

“…In order to further verify whether the PIS candidate region of the intersex individual was really missing, primers, namely PIS-1, PIS-2, PIS-3, and PIS-4, for the homologous sequence in the ovine PIS region were designed to reference the second generation genome of the sheep chr1: 247747059-247755846 sequence (Supplemental Table S1). We performed assays of amplification on two intersex and six normal LFT sheep according to previous reaction volume and amplification procedure [27]. The products were separated on 2.5% agarose gels.…”