Genomic regions influencing intramuscular fat in divergently selected rabbit lines

[EN] Intramuscular fat (IMF) is one of the main meat quality traits for breeding programs in livestock species. The main objective of this study was to identify genomic regions associated with IMF content comparing two rabbit populations divergently selected for this trait, and to generate a list of putative candidate genes. Animals were genotyped using the Affymetrix Axiom OrcunSNP Array (200k). After quality control, the data involved 477 animals and 93,540 single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs). Two methods were used in this research: single marker regressions with the data adjusted by genomic relatedness, and a Bayesian multi-marker regression. Associated genomic regions were located on the rabbit chromosomes (OCU) OCU1, OCU8 and OCU13. The highest value for the percentage of the genomic variance explained by a genomic region was found in two consecutive genomic windows on OCU8 (7.34%). Genes in the associated regions of OCU1 and OCU8 presented biological functions related to the control of adipose cell function, lipid binding, transportation and localization (APOLD1, PLBD1, PDE6H, GPRC5D, and GPRC5A) and lipid metabolic processes (MTMR2). The EWSR1 gene, underlying the OCU13 region, is linked to the development of brown adipocytes. The findings suggest that there is a large component of polygenic effect behind the differences in IMF content in these two lines, as the variance explained by most of the windows was low. The genomic regions of OCU1, OCU8 and OCU13 revealed novel candidate genes. Further studies would be needed to validate the associations and explore their possible application in selection programs.The work was funded by project AGL2014-55921-C2-1-P from National Programme for Fostering Excellence in Scientific and Technical Research -Project I+D. BSS was supported by a FPI grant from the Ministry of Economy and Competitiveness of Spain+ (BES-2015-074194). NIB was supported with a "Ramon y Cajal" grant provided by Ministerio de Ciencia e Innovacion (RYC-2016-19764). CSH and PN were supported by the Medical Research Council (United kingdom, grants MC_PC_U127592696 and MC_PC_U127561128). CSH was supported by Biotechnology and Biological Sciences Research Council (United Kingdom, Grant/Award Number: BBS/E/D/30002276).Sosa-Madrid, BS.; Hernández, P.; Blasco Mateu, A.; Haley, CS.; Fontanesi, L.; Santacreu Jerez, MA.; Pena, RN.... (2020). Genomic regions influencing intramuscular fat in divergently selected rabbit lines. Animal Genetics. 51:58-69. https://doi.org/10.1111/age.12873586951Aken, B. L., Ayling, S., Barrell, D., Clarke, L., Curwen, V., Fairley, S., … Searle, S. M. J. (2016). The Ensembl gene annotation system. Database, 2016, baw093. doi:10.1093/database/baw093Aloulou, A., Ali, Y. B., Bezzine, S., Gargouri, Y., & Gelb, M. 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