Skip to main page content
U.S. flag

An official website of the United States government

Dot gov

The .gov means it’s official.
Federal government websites often end in .gov or .mil. Before sharing sensitive information, make sure you’re on a federal government site.

Https

The site is secure.
The https:// ensures that you are connecting to the official website and that any information you provide is encrypted and transmitted securely.

Access keys NCBI Homepage MyNCBI Homepage Main Content Main Navigation
. 2016 Jan 27;17 Suppl 1(Suppl 1):15.
doi: 10.1186/s12863-015-0309-6.

Genetic determinants of pig birth weight variability

Xuemin Wang  1   2 , Xiaolei Liu  3   4 , Dadong Deng  5 , Mei Yu  6 , Xiaoping Li  7
Affiliations

Genetic determinants of pig birth weight variability

Xuemin Wang et al. BMC Genet. .

Abstract

Background: Piglet birth weight variability, a trait also known as the within-litter homogeneity of birth weight, reflects the sow's prolificacy, because it is positively genetically correlated with preweaning mortality but negatively correlated with the mean growth of piglets during sucking. In addition, the maternal additive genetic variance and heritability has been found exist for this trait, thus, reduction in the variability of piglet birth weight to improve the sow prolificacy is possible by selective breeding.

Results: We performed a genome wide association study (GWAS) in 82 sows with extreme standard deviation of birth weights within the first parity to identify significant SNPs, and finally 266 genome-wide significant SNPs (p < 0.01) were identified. These SNPs were mainly enriched on chromosome 7, 1, 13, 14, 15 and 18. We further scanned genes of the top 50 SNPs with the lowest p values and found some genes involved in plasma glucose homeostasis (GLP1R) and lipid metabolism as well as maternal-fetal lipid transport (AACS, APOB, OSBPL10 and LRP1B) which may contribute to the birth weight variability trait.

Conclusions: Birth weight variability trait has a low heritability. It is not easy to get significant signal by GWAS using small sample size. Herein, we identified some candidate chromosome regions especially chromosome 7 and suggested five genes which may provide some information for the further study.

PubMed Disclaimer

Figures

Fig. 1
Fig. 1
Manhattan-Plot for association of SNP loci with birth weight variability. The X axis indicates in different colors from left to right, SNP locations from chromosomes 1–18 (chromosome location for unmapped SNPs was represented by 0), using Sus scrofa genome build10.2. The Y axis represents the minus log of the P-value for each SNP
Fig. 2
Fig. 2
The genomic distribution of the 249 significant SNPs (p < 0.05) associated with piglet birth weight variability
Fig. 3
Fig. 3
Summary of the five candidate genes involved in glucose and lipid homeostasis as well as maternal-fetal lipid transport pathways
See this image and copyright information in PMC

References

    1. Southwood OI, Kennedy BW. Genetic and environmental trends for litter size in swine. J Anim Sci. 1991;69(8):3177–82. - PubMed
    1. Blasco A, Sorensen D, Bidanel JP. Bayesian inference of genetic parameters and selection response for litter size components in pigs. Genetics. 1998;149(1):301–6. - PMC - PubMed
    1. Noguera JL, Varona L, Babot D, Estany J. Multivariate analysis of litter size for multiple parities with production traits in pigs: I. Bayesian variance component estimation. J Anim Sci. 2002;80(10):2540–7. - PubMed
    1. Noguera JL, Varona L, Babot D, Estany J. Multivariate analysis of litter size for multiple parities with production traits in pigs: II. Response to selection for litter size and correlated response to production traits. J Anim Sci. 2002;80(10):2548–55. - PubMed
    1. Roehe R, Kalm E. Estimation of genetic and environmen-tal risk factors associated with pre-weaning mortality in piglets using generalized linear mixed models. J Anim Sci. 2000;70:227–40.

Publication types