Research progresses in revealing complex traits of animals based on genomic structural variations
Animals have evolved a wide variety of phenotypic traits to adapt to their environment.Among the molecular mechanisms of trait evolution,genomic structural variation is one of the important driving forces affecting complex traits in animals,which reflects variability at different locations and sequences in the genome,including a wide range of variant types such as large segment balanced variant inversions and translocations,and unbalanced variant insertions,deletions and duplications.Compared with single-base variants and small insertion deletions,genomic structural variants affect a wider range of DNA sequences in the genome and have a greater impact on complex traits in species.In this article,we will summarize the types of genomic structural variants and the development history of techniques for their detections and identifications,and review the research progress on the association between genomic structural variants and complex traits in terms of animal coat color traits,extreme environmental adaptations,and economic traits of domesticated animals,to provide important references to analyze the molecular mechanisms of complex traits from the perspective of genomic structural variants.