Research on associations between variants and haplotypes of Aquaporin 9 (AQP9) gene with growth traits in three cattle breeds

Abstract

Aquaporin 9 plays critical roles in aspects of energy homeostasis, metabolism, gluconeogenesis, fat synthesis and even the individual growth and development. So the Aquaporin 9 (AQP9) gene is a potential candidate gene for bovine growth traits. In this study, we detected the polymorphism of the bovine AQP9 gene including all exons by PCR–SSCP and DNA sequencing methods with six pairs of PCR primers in 555 individuals from three cattle breeds. Three novel SNPs (NC_007308:g.47575 C > T, 47615 C > T, 47690A > G) were detected using P6 primer. The linkage disequilibrium analysis indicated that the three SNPs were completely linked (r² = 1), which constructed three genotypes (AA, AB, BB). The genotype AB was dominant in all three breeds. The frequencies of haplotype A and haplotype B were almost equivalent between each other. The individuals with genotype AB were significantly higher than those individuals with genotype BB in body weight (p < 0.01), chest circumference (p < 0.05) and rump length (p < 0.05). Moreover, individuals with genotype AA were significantly higher than those of individuals with genotype BB in body height (p < 0.01). These results suggested that the novel SNPs could be a perfect molecular marker for marker-assisted selection (MAS) breeding.

Keywords:

• Aquaporin 9 (AQP9)
• single-nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs)
• growth traits
• polymorphism
• cattle

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by grants from the Science and Technology Planning Project of Jiangsu Province [grant Nos. SZ-XZ2017016 and BN2016014]. A Project Funded by the Priority Academic Program Development of Jiangsu Higher Education Institutions (PAPD), Science and Technology Planning Project of Xuzhou City [grant Nos. KC18117 and KC16NX073], Natural Science Foundation of Jiangsu Province [grant No. BK20160217] and Postgraduate Research and Practice Innovation Program of Jiangsu Normal University [grant No. 2017YXJ123].