Genome-Wide Association Study for Body Length, Body Height, and Total Teat Number in Large White Pigs

作者：Yifeng Hong, Jian Ye, Linsong Dong, Yalan Li, Limin Yan, Gengyuan Cai, Dewu Liu, Cheng Tan, Zhenfang Wu · 发表于：Frontiers in Genetics · 年份：2021 · DOI：10.3389/fgene.2021.650370 · 被引用次数：24 · 研究领域：Genetic and phenotypic traits in livestock、Genetic Mapping and Diversity in Plants and Animals、Livestock Farming and Management

Body length, body height, and total teat number are economically important traits in pig breeding, as these traits are usually associated with the growth, reproductivity, and longevity potential of piglets. Here, we report a genetic analysis of these traits using a population comprising 2,068 Large White pigs. A genotyping-by-sequencing (GBS) approach was used to provide high-density genome-wide SNP discovery and genotyping. Univariate and bivariate animal models were used to estimate heritability and genetic correlations. The results showed that heritability estimates for body length, body height, and total teat number were 0.25 ± 0.04, 0.11 ± 0.03, and 0.22 ± 0.04, respectively. The genetic correlation between body length and body height exhibited a strongly positive correlation (0.63 ± 0.15), while a positive but low genetic correlation was observed between total teat number and body length. Furthermore, we used two different genome-wide association study (GWAS) approaches: single-locus GWAS and weighted single-step GWAS (WssGWAS), to identify candidate genes for these traits. Single-locus GWAS detected 76, 13, and 29 significant single-nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) associated with body length, body height, and total teat number. Notably, the most significant SNP (S17_15781294), which is located 20 kb downstream of the BMP2 gene, explained 9.09% of the genetic variance for body length traits, and it also explained 9.57% of the genetic variance for body height traits. In ...