Genome-Wide Association Study on Body Weight Reveals Major Loci on OAR6 in Australian Merino Sheep

Abstract Text: Body weight (BW) is an important trait for meat production in sheep. In order to clarify genes and chromosomal regions that might be associated with body weight in sheep, a genome-wide association study using Illumina 50K Ovine SNP chip on a population of 1,743 Australian Merino sheep was carried out. A total of 39 SNPs were found to be associated with BW at Bonferroni-corrected genome-wide significance of 1%. One region on OAR6, between 40.3 Mb and 42.9 Mb, included 13 significant SNPs that were identified as being associated with the trait. The most significant SNP (OAR6_41936490.1) has 2.11 kg of allele substitution effect, while the second most significant SNP (s17946.1) has 2.13 kg of effect on body weight. These correspond to 24.33% and 24.57%, respectively, of the phenotypic standard deviations for BW in Australian Merino sheep.

Keywords:

Genome-Wide Association Study, Body Weight, Sheep