Fine mapping of a QTL affecting levels of skatole on pig chromosome 7

BMC Genetics

Research Article

Matthew P. Kent¹  Harald Grove¹  Sigbjørn Lien¹  Rahul Agarwal¹  Hanne Hamland²  Eli Grindflek²  Maren van Son² 

[1] Centre for Integrative Genetics (CIGENE), Department of Animal and Aquacultural Sciences, Faculty of Biosciences, Norwegian University of Life Sciences, P. O. Box 5003, 1432, Ås, Norway;Topigs Norsvin, Storhamargata 44, 2317, Hamar, Norway;

关键词: Boar taint;    Skatole;    Fine mapping;    QTL;    Whole genome re-sequencing;    Pigs;   

DOI  :  10.1186/s12863-017-0549-8

 received in 2017-02-08, accepted in 2017-09-11,  发布年份 2017

来源: Springer

【 摘 要 】

BackgroundPrevious studies in the Norwegian pig breeds Landrace and Duroc have revealed a QTL for levels of skatole located in the region 74.7–80.5 Mb on SSC7. Skatole is one of the main components causing boar taint, which gives an undesirable smell and taste to the pig meat when heated. Surgical castration of boars is a common practice to reduce the risk of boar taint, however, a selection for boars genetically predisposed for low levels of taint would help eliminating the need for castration and be advantageous for both economic and welfare reasons. In order to identify the causal mutation(s) for the QTL and/or identify genetic markers for selection purposes we performed a fine mapping of the SSC7 skatole QTL region.ResultsA dense set of markers on SSC7 was obtained by whole genome re-sequencing of 24 Norwegian Landrace and 23 Duroc boars. Subsets of 126 and 157 SNPs were used for association analyses in Landrace and Duroc, respectively. Significant single markers associated with skatole spanned a large 4.4 Mb region from 75.9–80.3 Mb in Landrace, with the highest test scores found in a region between the genes NOVA1 and TGM1 (p < 0.001). The same QTL was obtained in Duroc and, although less significant, with associated SNPs spanning a 1.2 Mb region from 78.9–80.1 Mb (p < 0.01). The highest test scores in Duroc were found in genes of the granzyme family (GZMB and GZMH-like) and STXBP6. Haplotypes associated with levels of skatole were identified in Landrace but not in Duroc, and a haplotype block was found to explain 2.3% of the phenotypic variation for skatole. The SNPs in this region were not associated with levels of sex steroids.ConclusionsFine mapping of a QTL for skatole on SSC7 confirmed associations of this region with skatole levels in pigs. The QTL region was narrowed down to 4.4 Mb in Landrace and haplotypes explaining 2.3% of the phenotypic variance for skatole levels were identified. Results confirmed that sex steroids are not affected by this QTL region, making these markers attractive for selection against boar taint.

【 授权许可】

CC BY   
© The Author(s). 2017