Abstract
The underlying genetic mechanisms affecting turkey growth traits have not been widely investigated. Genome-wide association studies (GWAS) is a powerful approach to identify candidate regions associated with complex phenotypes and diseases in livestock. In the present study, we performed GWAS to identify regions associated with 18-week body weight in a turkey population. The data included body weight observations for 24,989 female turkeys genotyped based on a 65K SNP panel. The analysis was carried out using a univariate mixed linear model with hatch-week-year and the 2 top principal components fitted as fixed effects and the accumulated polygenic effect of all markers captured by the genomic relationship matrix as random. Thirty-three significant markers were observed on 1, 2, 3, 4, 7 and 12 chromosomes, while 26 showed strong linkage disequilibrium extending up to 410 kb. These significant markers were mapped to 37 genes, of which 13 were novel. Interestingly, many of the investigated genes are known to be involved in growth and body weight. For instance, genes AKR1D1, PARP12, BOC, NCOA1, ADCY3 and CHCHD7 regulate growth, body weight, metabolism, digestion, bile acid biosynthetic and development of muscle cells. In summary, the results of our study revealed novel candidate genomic regions and candidate genes that could be managed within a turkey breeding program and adapted in fine mapping of quantitative trait loci to enhance genetic improvement in this species.
Highlights
Turkeys are mainly raised for meat and turkey production has increased worldwide in the last few years with the global market for turkey meat increasing to approximately 6 million tonnes per year between 2016 and 2019 [1]
The objective of this study was to identify genetic variants and candidate genes associated with 18-week body weight (BW) in turkeys using Genome-wide association studies (GWAS) in a turkey population genotyped with a proprietary 65K single nucleotide polymorphism (SNP) array
The results revealed that 33 SNPs were significantly associated with this trait based on a 5% false discovery rate (FDR)
Summary
Turkeys are mainly raised for meat and turkey production has increased worldwide in the last few years with the global market for turkey meat increasing to approximately 6 million tonnes per year between 2016 and 2019 [1]. Producing rapidly growing turkeys has been motivating breeders and farmers in response to the global high demand for meat [2, 3]. Improving growth and yield are central to the turkey breeding objectives aimed at increasing production and minimizing costs [4–6]. Studies have shown high positive genetic correlations between. Genome-wide association study for body weight in female turkeys production traits". The funders had no role in study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish, or preparation of the manuscript
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