Date: Tuesday, June 7, 2016
Time: 12:10 PM
Time: 12:10 PM
Room: Waterfront 2
Artificial selection and breeding for desirable traits has resulted in the evolution of diverse pig breeds showing a broad range of unique phenotypes. Duroc breed is known for its superior performance in terms of growth, carcass and meat quality traits. The breed is imported into South Korea for commercial production and has been under selection for economic traits during the last decades. However, selection signatures in Korean Duroc populations have not been yet investigated at the genome level. In this study, we detected selection signatures in the genome of four commercial Duroc populations (n = 488) and crossbred pigs (Duroc x Korean native pig, n = 155) sampled from five pig farms and genotyped using 50,862 autosomal markers. By applying the FST and extended haplotype homozygosity (EHH-Rsb) methods, we screened the highly differentiated SNPs and associated genes. These include known growth associated genes (DOCK7, PLCB4, HS2ST1, FBP2 and TG), carcass and meat quality genes (ANXA13,TG, COL14A, FBXO5, NR3C1, TG, SNX7, ARHGAP26 and DPYD), ear morphology gene (SOX5) and immune response genes (CADM1, IL18 and INPP5D) most of which are near or at fixation. The detection of genes related to production traits substantiate the analyses that pigs have been subjected to strong human mediated selection following domestication. These results can serve as a basis to investigate the underlying mutations associated with observed phenotypic variation in the genome of Duroc breed. Validation via genome-wide association analysis will also facilitate the inclusion of some of these markers in breeding programs.