Abstract

The gene encoding the brain-derived neurotrophic factor (BDNF) has been repeatedly associated with human obesity. As such, it could also contribute to the regulation of energy partitioning and the amount of secreted milk fat during lactation, which plays an important role in milk production in dairy cattle. Therefore, we performed an association study using estimated breeding values (EBVs) of bulls and yield deviations of German Holstein dairy cattle to test the effect of BDNF on milk fat yield (FY). A highly significant effect (corrected p-value = 3.362 × 10−4) was identified for an SNP 168 kb up-stream of the BDNF transcription start. The association tests provided evidence for an additive allele effect of 5.13 kg of fat per lactation on the EBV for milk FY in bulls and 6.80 kg of fat of the own production performance in cows explaining 1.72 and 0.60% of the phenotypic variance in the analyzed populations, respectively. The analyses of bulls and cows consistently showed three haplotype groups that differed significantly from each other, suggesting at least two different mutations in the BDNF region affecting the milk FY. The FY increasing alleles also had low but significant positive effects on protein and total milk yield which suggests a general role of the BDNF region in energy partitioning, rather than a specific regulation of fat synthesis. The results obtained in dairy cattle suggest similar effects of BDNF on milk composition in other species, including man.

Highlights

  • The gene encoding the brain-derived neurotrophic factor (BDNF ) is among those genes that have been repeatedly associated with human obesity

  • We performed an association study using estimated breeding values (EBVs) of bulls and yield deviations of German Holstein dairy cattle to test the effect of BDNF on milk fat yield (FY)

  • The results provide evidence that the BDNF region contributes to the variation in milk FY, while having an effect on protein yield (PY) and milk yield (MY)

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Summary

Introduction

The gene encoding the brain-derived neurotrophic factor (BDNF ) is among those genes that have been repeatedly associated with human obesity. The BDNF effect on body mass index was confirmed in the GIANT population with 249,796 individuals of European ancestry (Speliotes et al, 2010). The allele substitution effect of BDNF on the body mass index was small, 0.19 kg/m2, explaining 0.07% of the phenotypic variance in the population (Speliotes et al, 2010). In both humans and knockout mice it was shown that BDNF can influence eating behavior and energy expenditure by the regulation of appetite and energy balance in the hypothalamus (Kernie et al, 2000; Unger et al, 2007). BDNF is well investigated for its role in neuronal differentiation in humans (Binder and Scharfman, 2004), its role in energy metabolism is not yet clear

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