Abstract
BackgroundFatty acid composition in muscle is an important factor that affects the nutritive value and taste of pork. To investigate the genetic architecture of fatty acid composition of pork, we measured fatty acid contents in longissimus dorsi muscle of 1244 pigs from three divergent populations and conducted genome-wide association studies (GWAS) for fatty acid contents.ResultsWe detected 26 genome-wide significant quantitative trait loci (QTL) on eight chromosomes (SSC for Sus scrofa) for eight fatty acids. These loci not only replicated previously reported QTL for C18:0 on SSC14 and C20:0 on SSC16, but also included several novel QTL such as those for C20:1 on SSC7, C14:0 on SSC9, and C14:0, C16:0 and C16:1 on SSC12. Furthermore, we performed a meta-analysis of GWAS on five populations, including the three populations that were investigated in this study and two additional populations that we had previously examined. This enhanced the strength of the associations detected between fatty acid composition and several marker loci, especially for those for C18:0 on SSC14 and C20:0 on SSC16. The genes ELOVL5, ELOVL6, ELOVL7, FASN, SCD and THRSP, which have functions that are directly relevant to fatty acid metabolism, are proximal to the top associated markers at six significant QTL.ConclusionsThe findings improve our understanding of the genetic architecture of fatty acid composition in pork and contribute to further fine-map and characterize genes that influence fatty acid composition.Electronic supplementary materialThe online version of this article (doi:10.1186/s12711-016-0184-2) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users.
Highlights
Fatty acid composition in muscle is an important factor that affects the nutritive value and taste of pork
Genome-wide association studies (GWAS) have been performed to identify genomic regions associated with a variety of traits in pigs [6,7,8] and significant quantitative trait loci (QTL) that influence fatty acid composition
Characterization of candidate genes To identify functionally plausible candidate genes near the genome-wide significant single nucleotide polymorphism (SNP), we examined annotated genes around the region that was centered at each top SNP that was identified by genome-wide association studies (GWAS) in the Sus scrofa assembly (Build 10.2)
Summary
Fatty acid composition in muscle is an important factor that affects the nutritive value and taste of pork. Fatty acid composition is closely related to the nutritive value and the taste of meat. Saturated fatty acids such as C14:0 and C16:0 are risk factors for cardiovascular diseases such as coronary heart disease and atherosclerosis in humans [2]. Genome-wide association studies (GWAS) have been performed to identify genomic regions associated with a variety of traits in pigs [6,7,8] and significant quantitative trait loci (QTL) that influence fatty acid composition. Further investigations are needed to reveal additional QTL that affect fatty acid composition in pork from diverse breeds. A meta-analysis of results from multiple populations is required to improve the detection power of GWAS for fatty acid composition in pork
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