scholarly journals Detection of rs665862918 (15-bp Indel) of the HIAT1 Gene and its Strong Genetic Effects on Growth Traits in Goats

Animals ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 10 (2) ◽  
pp. 358
Author(s):  
Jiayang Gao ◽  
Xiaoyue Song ◽  
Hui Wu ◽  
Qi Tang ◽  
Zhenyu Wei ◽  
...  

The hippocampus abundant transcript 1 (HIAT1) gene, which was detected by the genome-wide identification of selective sweeps among elite goat breeds and water buffalo, is proposed to play an important role in meat characteristics. Four indels of the HIAT1 gene selected from the NCBI and Ensembl databases were detected via a pooling and sequencing strategy. A 15 bp insertion (rs665862918) in the first intron of HIAT1 was selected and classified on an electrophoresis platform in the Shaanbei white cashmere goat (SBWC) population. The correlation analysis revealed that rs665862918 is significantly highly associated with chest width (p = 1.57 × 10−5), chest depth (p = 8.85 × 10−5), heart girth (p = 1.05 × 10−7), body length (p = 0.022), and height at hip cross (p = 0.023) in the SBWC population (n = 1013). Further analysis revealed that individuals with a genotype insertion/insertion (II) of the rs665862918 locus exhibited better growth trait performance than individuals with an insertion/deletion (ID) or deletion/deletion (DD). These findings verify that HIAT1 affects the body size of goats and that rs665862918 could be a potential molecular marker for growth traits in goat breeding.

2018 ◽  
Vol 61 (3) ◽  
pp. 311-319 ◽  
Author(s):  
Zhenyu Wei ◽  
Ke Wang ◽  
Yiqing Hui ◽  
Hailong Yan ◽  
Haijing Zhu ◽  
...  

Abstract. The AT motif-binding factor (ATBF1), also known as zinc finger homeobox 3 (ZFXH3), is necessary for activating the POU1F1 gene; thus, the ATBF1 gene greatly affects the grow traits in animals. The objective of this work was to explore novel indel (insertion/deletion) variations and their associations with growth traits in three native Chinese goat breeds. Two indels within the ATBF1 gene were found in the Shaanbei white cashmere goat (SWCG; n=581), the Guanzhong dairy goat (GZDG; n=334) and the Hainan black goat (HNBG; n=270) for the first time using 12 pairs of primers. Association analysis revealed that the P1-12-bp indel was consistently correlated with the body height of the three breeds, and individuals with ID (insertion/deletion) and DD (deletion/deletion) genotypes had a higher body weight than the II (insertion/insertion) genotype (P=0.036); the P11-6-bp indel was consistently correlated with chest circumference and hip width of the three breeds. Moreover, these two loci were associated with other several growth-related traits in different breeds. Hence, these findings indicated that the goat ATBF1 gene had marked effects on growth traits and the growth-trait-related loci, which would contribute to improving the growth-related traits of local breeds in the goat industry by implementing marker-assisted selection (MAS).


Animals ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 11 (7) ◽  
pp. 2064
Author(s):  
Zhenyu Wei ◽  
Ke Wang ◽  
Hui Wu ◽  
Zhen Wang ◽  
Chuanying Pan ◽  
...  

Stature and weight are important growth and development traits for animals, which also significantly affect the productivity of livestock. Polymorphic adenoma gene 1 (PLAG1) is located in the growth-related quantitative trait nucleotides (QTN), and its variation has been determined to significantly affect the body stature of bovines. This study found that novel 15-bp InDel could significantly influence important growth traits in goats. The frequencies of genotypes of the 15-bp mutation and relationship with core growth traits such as body weight, body height, height at hip cross, chest circumference, hip width and body index were explored in 1581 individuals among 4 Chinese native goat breeds. The most frequent genotypes of Shaanbei white Cashmere goat (SWCG), Inner Mongolia White Cashmere goat (IMCG) and Guanzhong Dairy goat (GZDG) were II genotypes (insertion/insertion), and the frequency of ID genotype (insertion/deletion) was found to be slightly higher than that of II genotype in Hainan Black goat (HNBG), showing that the frequency of the I allele was higher than that of the D allele. In adult goats, there were significant differences between 15-bp variation and body weight, chest circumference and body height traits in SWCG (p < 0.05). Furthermore, the locus was also found to be significantly correlated with the body index of HNBG (p = 0.044) and hip width in GZDG (p = 0.002). In regard to lambs, there were significant differences in height at the hip cross of SWCG (p = 0.036) and hip width in IMWC (p = 0.005). The corresponding results suggest that the 15-bp InDel mutation of PLAG1 is associated with the regulation of important growth characteristics of both adult and lamb of goats, which may serve as efficient molecular markers for goat breeding.


2021 ◽  
Vol 12 ◽  
Author(s):  
Yonglan Liao ◽  
Zhicheng Wang ◽  
Leonardo S. Glória ◽  
Kai Zhang ◽  
Cuixia Zhang ◽  
...  

Growth is a complex trait with moderate to high heritability in livestock and must be described by the longitudinal data measured over multiple time points. Therefore, the used phenotype in genome-wide association studies (GWAS) of growth traits could be either the measures at the preselected time point or the fitted parameters of whole growth trajectory. A promising alternative approach was recently proposed that combined the fitting of growth curves and estimation of single-nucleotide polymorphism (SNP) effects into single-step nonlinear mixed model (NMM). In this study, we collected the body weights at 35, 42, 49, 56, 63, 70, and 84 days of age for 401 animals in a crossbred population of meat rabbits and compared five fitting models of growth curves (Logistic, Gompertz, Brody, Von Bertalanffy, and Richards). The logistic model was preferably selected and subjected to GWAS using the approach of single-step NMM, which was based on 87,704 genome-wide SNPs. A total of 45 significant SNPs distributed on five chromosomes were found to simultaneously affect the two growth parameters of mature weight (A) and maturity rate (K). However, no SNP was found to be independently associated with either A or K. Seven positional genes, including KCNIP4, GBA3, PPARGC1A, LDB2, SHISA3, GNA13, and FGF10, were suggested to be candidates affecting growth performances in meat rabbits. To the best of our knowledge, this is the first report of GWAS based on single-step NMM for longitudinal traits in rabbits, which also revealed the genetic architecture of growth traits that are helpful in implementing genome selection.


Animals ◽  
2019 ◽  
Vol 9 (9) ◽  
pp. 681 ◽  
Author(s):  
Xiya Fang ◽  
Zhenyu Lai ◽  
Jie Liu ◽  
Chunlan Zhang ◽  
Shipeng Li ◽  
...  

Nuclear receptor subfamily 6, group A, member 1 (NR6A1), as an important member of the nuclear receptor family, plays an important role in regulating growth, metabolism, and differentiation of embryonic stem cells. For this reason, the NR6A1 gene is considered to be a promising candidate for economic traits and was found to be associated with body size traits in many livestock. However, no studies have been conducted on NR6A1 in donkeys so far. Thus, in this research, we focused on donkeys and identified a 13 bp deletion in intron-1 of the NR6A1 gene among 408 individuals from Guanzhong and Dezhou donkeys using polyacrylamide gel electrophoresis. Three genotypes were identified, namely II, ID, and DD. The association analysis indicated that the body lengths and body heights5f genotype II individuals were significantly different to those of genotype ID in Dezhou donkeys. Conclusively, the 13 bp deletion was associated with growth traits in both Guanzhong donkeys and Dezhou donkeys, indicating that the NR6A1 gene could be a possible candidate gene in marker-assisted selection for donkey breeding programs.


2021 ◽  
Vol 11 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Morteza Bitaraf Sani ◽  
Javad Zare Harofte ◽  
Mohammad Hossein Banabazi ◽  
Saeid Esmaeilkhanian ◽  
Ali Shafei Naderi ◽  
...  

AbstractFor thousands of years, camels have produced meat, milk, and fiber in harsh desert conditions. For a sustainable development to provide protein resources from desert areas, it is necessary to pay attention to genetic improvement in camel breeding. By using genotyping-by-sequencing (GBS) method we produced over 14,500 genome wide markers to conduct a genome- wide association study (GWAS) for investigating the birth weight, daily gain, and body weight of 96 dromedaries in the Iranian central desert. A total of 99 SNPs were associated with birth weight, daily gain, and body weight (p-value < 0.002). Genomic breeding values (GEBVs) were estimated with the BGLR package using (i) all 14,522 SNPs and (ii) the 99 SNPs by GWAS. Twenty-eight SNPs were associated with birth weight, daily gain, and body weight (p-value < 0.001). Annotation of the genomic region (s) within ± 100 kb of the associated SNPs facilitated prediction of 36 candidate genes. The accuracy of GEBVs was more than 0.65 based on all 14,522 SNPs, but the regression coefficients for birth weight, daily gain, and body weight were 0.39, 0.20, and 0.23, respectively. Because of low sample size, the GEBVs were predicted using the associated SNPs from GWAS. The accuracy of GEBVs based on the 99 associated SNPs was 0.62, 0.82, and 0.57 for birth weight, daily gain, and body weight. This report is the first GWAS using GBS on dromedary camels and identifies markers associated with growth traits that could help to plan breeding program to genetic improvement. Further researches using larger sample size and collaboration of the camel farmers and more profound understanding will permit verification of the associated SNPs identified in this project. The preliminary results of study show that genomic selection could be the appropriate way to genetic improvement of body weight in dromedary camels, which is challenging due to a long generation interval, seasonal reproduction, and lack of records and pedigrees.


Nutrients ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 13 (5) ◽  
pp. 1413
Author(s):  
Mariana Lizbeth Rodríguez-López ◽  
José Jaime Martínez-Magaña ◽  
David Ruiz-Ramos ◽  
Ana Rosa García ◽  
Laura Gonzalez ◽  
...  

Binge-eating disorder, recently accepted as a diagnostic category, is differentiated from bulimia nervosa in that the former shows the presence of binge-eating episodes and the absence of compensatory behavior. Epigenetics is a conjunct of mechanisms (like DNA methylation) that regulate gene expression, which are dependent on environmental changes. Analysis of DNA methylation in eating disorders shows that it is reduced. The present study aimed to analyze the genome-wide DNA methylation differences between individuals diagnosed with BED and BN. A total of 46 individuals were analyzed using the Infinium Methylation EPIC array. We found 11 differentially methylated sites between BED- and BN-diagnosed individuals, with genome-wide significance. Most of the associations were found in genes related to metabolic processes (ST3GAL4, PRKAG2, and FRK), which are hypomethylated genes in BED. Cg04781532, located in the body of the PRKAG2 gene (protein kinase AMP-activated non-catalytic subunit gamma 2), was hypomethylated in individuals with BED. Agonists of PRKAG2, which is the subunit of AMPK (AMP-activated protein kinase), are proposed to treat obesity, BED, and BN. The present study contributes important insights into the effect that BED could have on PRKAG2 activation.


2021 ◽  
Vol 53 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Bingru Zhao ◽  
Hanpeng Luo ◽  
Xixia Huang ◽  
Chen Wei ◽  
Jiang Di ◽  
...  

Abstract Background Genetic improvement of wool and growth traits is a major goal in the sheep industry, but their underlying genetic architecture remains elusive. To improve our understanding of these mechanisms, we conducted a weighted single-step genome-wide association study (WssGWAS) and then integrated the results with large-scale transcriptome data for five wool traits and one growth trait in Merino sheep: mean fibre diameter (MFD), coefficient of variation of the fibre diameter (CVFD), crimp number (CN), mean staple length (MSL), greasy fleece weight (GFW), and live weight (LW). Results Our dataset comprised 7135 individuals with phenotype data, among which 1217 had high-density (HD) genotype data (n = 372,534). The genotypes of 707 of these animals were imputed from the Illumina Ovine single nucleotide polymorphism (SNP) 54 BeadChip to the HD Array. The heritability of these traits ranged from 0.05 (CVFD) to 0.36 (MFD), and between-trait genetic correlations ranged from − 0.44 (CN vs. LW) to 0.77 (GFW vs. LW). By integrating the GWAS signals with RNA-seq data from 500 samples (representing 87 tissue types from 16 animals), we detected tissues that were relevant to each of the six traits, e.g. liver, muscle and the gastrointestinal (GI) tract were the most relevant tissues for LW, and leukocytes and macrophages were the most relevant cells for CN. For the six traits, 54 quantitative trait loci (QTL) were identified covering 81 candidate genes on 21 ovine autosomes. Multiple candidate genes showed strong tissue-specific expression, e.g. BNC1 (associated with MFD) and CHRNB1 (LW) were specifically expressed in skin and muscle, respectively. By conducting phenome-wide association studies (PheWAS) in humans, we found that orthologues of several of these candidate genes were significantly (FDR < 0.05) associated with similar traits in humans, e.g. BNC1 was significantly associated with MFD in sheep and with hair colour in humans, and CHRNB1 was significantly associated with LW in sheep and with body mass index in humans. Conclusions Our findings provide novel insights into the biological and genetic mechanisms underlying wool and growth traits, and thus will contribute to the genetic improvement and gene mapping of complex traits in sheep.


2021 ◽  
Vol 11 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
H. Busra Cagirici ◽  
Hikmet Budak ◽  
Taner Z. Sen

AbstractG-quadruplexes (G4s) are four-stranded nucleic acid structures with closely spaced guanine bases forming square planar G-quartets. Aberrant formation of G4 structures has been associated with genomic instability. However, most plant species are lacking comprehensive studies of G4 motifs. In this study, genome-wide identification of G4 motifs in barley was performed, followed by a comparison of genomic distribution and molecular functions to other monocot species, such as wheat, maize, and rice. Similar to the reports on human and some plants like wheat, G4 motifs peaked around the 5′ untranslated region (5′ UTR), the first coding domain sequence, and the first intron start sites on antisense strands. Our comparative analyses in human, Arabidopsis, maize, rice, and sorghum demonstrated that the peak points could be erroneously merged into a single peak when large window sizes are used. We also showed that the G4 distributions around genic regions are relatively similar in the species studied, except in the case of Arabidopsis. G4 containing genes in monocots showed conserved molecular functions for transcription initiation and hydrolase activity. Additionally, we provided examples of imperfect G4 motifs.


Author(s):  
Gaotian Zhang ◽  
Jake D Mostad ◽  
Erik C Andersen

Abstract Life history traits underlie the fitness of organisms and are under strong natural selection. A new mutation that positively impacts a life history trait will likely increase in frequency and become fixed in a population (e.g. a selective sweep). The identification of the beneficial alleles that underlie selective sweeps provides insights into the mechanisms that occurred during the evolution of a species. In the global population of Caenorhabditis elegans, we previously identified selective sweeps that have drastically reduced chromosomal-scale genetic diversity in the species. Here, we measured the fecundity of 121 wild C. elegans strains, including many recently isolated divergent strains from the Hawaiian islands and found that strains with larger swept genomic regions have significantly higher fecundity than strains without evidence of the recent selective sweeps. We used genome-wide association (GWA) mapping to identify three quantitative trait loci (QTL) underlying the fecundity variation. Additionally, we mapped previous fecundity data from wild C. elegans strains and C. elegans recombinant inbred advanced intercross lines that were grown in various conditions and detected eight QTL using GWA and linkage mappings. These QTL show the genetic complexity of fecundity across this species. Moreover, the haplotype structure in each GWA QTL region revealed correlations with recent selective sweeps in the C. elegans population. North American and European strains had significantly higher fecundity than most strains from Hawaii, a hypothesized origin of the C. elegans species, suggesting that beneficial alleles that caused increased fecundity could underlie the selective sweeps during the worldwide expansion of C. elegans.


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