Detection of small sequence variations within the goat GHR gene and its effects on growth traits

Abstract

Growth hormone receptor (GHR) gene is considered to be an important candidate gene in growth traits. Therefore, the purpose of this study was to detect whether there were potential indel variations in the GHR gene that were related to the growth traits of the Shaanbei white cashmere goats (SBWC). In this study, genomic DNA from 931 healthy SBWC individuals were used to verify the relationship between the indel of the GHR gene and growth traits. Two indel variants, P4_9-bp indel in intron 1 and P14_10-bp indel in 3’-UTR, were confirmed. Association analyses demonstrated that these two indel polymorphism loci were associated with the chest circumference and chest width of SBWC. Additionally, for the P4_9-bp and P14_10-bp indel loci, the ID and II genotypes were dominant genotypes, respectively. Moreover, the genotypic distributions of these two indel loci in SBWC were significantly different from those in three other Chinese indigenous goat breeds (HNBG, GZDG and IMWC) (p < 0.05). Taken together, two indel loci (P4_9-bp indel and P14_10-bp indel) both significantly affected the growth traits of goats. This illustrated that these two indel loci might be the potential DNA marker for use in improving the selection and breeding of goats.

Keywords:

• GHR gene
• Shaanbei Cashmere goat
• indel
• growth traits

Acknowledgments

We greatly thanked the staff of SBWC breeding farm, Shaanxi province, P.R. China for their collecting samples. We greatly thanked all staff of Bureau of Veterinary and animal Huabandy of Hengshan County, Yulin, Shaanxi, China for their collecting samples.

Author contributions

HY, LQ and YG came up with the idea and wrote manuscript. HZ, JL and RX collected the goat samples and isolated of genomic DNA. HY and WY performed the experiments. HY and WY analyzed the data. All authors approved the final version of the manuscript for submission.

Disclosure statement

We certify that there is no conflict of interest with any financial organization regarding the material discussed in the manuscript.

Additional information

Funding

This work was funded by the National Natural Science Foundation of China [31760650 to HL.Y], Datong Municipal Science and Technology Bureau [2020061 to HL.Y]; PhD Initiation Grant of Datong University [2019-B-07 to HL.Y]; Science and Technology Innovation Project of Universities, Shanxi Province of China [2020L0493 to HL.Y]; The Department of Science and Technology, Shanxi Province of China [20210302124400 to YG].