Genetic determinants of pig birth weight variability. Issue 1 (February 2016)

• Record Type: Journal Article
• Authors: Wang, Xuemin; Liu, Xiaolei; Deng, Dadong; Yu, Mei; Li, Xiaoping
• Is Part Of: BMC genetics. Volume 17:Issue 1(2016)
• Page Start: 41
• Page End: 48
• Publication Date: 2016-02
• Subjects: Birth weight variability -- GWAS -- Glucose and lipid homeostasis -- Maternal-fetal lipid transport; Genetics -- Periodicals; 576.505
• DOI: 10.1186/s12863-015-0309-6
• Languages: English
• ISSNs: 1471-2156

Abstract

Abstract Background Piglet birth weight variability, a trait also known as the within-litter homogeneity of birth weight, reflects the sow's prolificacy, because it is positively genetically correlated with preweaning mortality but negatively correlated with the mean growth of piglets during sucking. In addition, the maternal additive genetic variance and heritability has been found exist for this trait, thus, reduction in the variability of piglet birth weight to improve the sow prolificacy is possible by selective breeding. Results We performed a genome wide association study (GWAS) in 82 sows with extreme standard deviation of birth weights within the first parity to identify significant SNPs, and finally 266 genome-wide significant SNPs (p < 0.01) were identified. These SNPs were mainly enriched on chromosome 7, 1, 13, 14, 15 and 18. We further scanned genes of the top 50 SNPs with the lowest p values and found some genes involved in plasma glucose homeostasis (GLP1R ) and lipid metabolism as well as maternal-fetal lipid transport (AACS, APOB, OSBPL10 andLRP1B ) which may contribute to the birth weight variability trait. Conclusions Birth weight variability trait has a low heritability. It is not easy to get significant signal by GWAS using small sample size. Herein, we identified some candidate chromosome regions especially chromosome 7 and suggested five genes which may provide some information for the further study.