Genome-wide Association Analysis of F2 Tenderness in Texel sheep × Altay sheep
F2 individuals of 462 Texel sheep × Altay sheep were selected in this study,including 229 male lambs and 233 female lambs.All the experimental sheep were reared under uniform conditions until 8 months of age and then slaughtered.After slaughter,the tenderness was measured by C-LM4 tenderness meter.Illumina sheep high density(600K)SNP chip was used for genotyping,and the MLM model of GEMMA software was used for genome-wide association analysis of tenderness traits.After quality con-trol,the remaining 613178 SNPs were used for genome-wide association analysis,and a total of 9 potential SNPs were found to be related to tenderness on chromosomes 2,6,23,and 24,respectively.Based on the biological functions of genes and related literature,EREG,AREG and PDE1A genes were speculated to be involved in the biological processes of muscle regeneration and muscle fiber formation,and could be used as important candidate genes affecting tenderness.The aim of this study was to locate SNP sites related to sheep tenderness and their important candidate genes by genome-wide association analysis,so as to provide a scientific basis for improving sheep muscle tenderness by molecular biological methods.
tendernessTexel sheep × Altay sheepF2candidate genegenome-wide association a-nalysisSNP