Relationship of FASN Gene Polymorphism in Growth Performance and Wool Traits of Awassi Sheep

Abstract

The study was conducted in the sheep farm of the Al-Fayhaa station in the Jableh sub-district / Al-Musaib project (55 km south of Baghdad), as well as the Biotechnology Laboratory in the College of Agricultural Engineering Sciences / University of Baghdad for the period from 5/1/2022 to 30/10/2022. With the aim of detecting, the polymorphism in the FASN gene and its relationship to growth and wool production, as well as the Polymorphism distribution and allele frequency in 52 Awassi sheep and its lambs, three polymorphism appeared in this variant (G>A SNP), which are GG, GA, and AA, and their percentage were 63.46, 32.69 and 3.85%, and the differences between them were highly significant (P≤0.01) with a frequency of 0.70 and 0.30 for alleles G and A, respectively. The results of the statistical analysis showed that the body weight of lambs at birth was significantly (P≤0.05) affected by the difference in the FASN gene polymorphism (G>A SNP), and reached a maximum for lambs produced from mothers with a heterozygous genotype GA (4.22 kg) and then the mutant genotype AA (4.21 kg), The rate of weight gain between birth and weaning was also significantly affected by this variant of the FASN gene for wild-type GG (14.68 kg). It appeared that there was a significant variation (P≤0.05) in the fiber diameter of wool according to the FASN gene polymorphism (G>A SNP). We can conclude by studying the genetic features in the FASN gene that they can be adopted in developing strategies for genetic improvement of sheep, and the application of the study to a larger sample and several sites and extracting the interaction between two SNPs would give more accurate results and determine the best method for managing and improving sheep flocks.