Genome-Wide Association Studies of Growth Trait Heterosis in Crossbred Meat Rabbits

Abstract

The application of heterosis can not only effectively improve the disease resistance and meat quality of livestock, but also significantly enhance the reproduction and growth of livestock and poultry. We conducted genome-wide association studies using data from F2 crossbred meat rabbits to screen out candidate genes with significant dominant effects associated with economic trait variation. High-throughput sequencing technology was used to obtain SNPs covering the whole genome to evaluate the homozygosity of the population genome, and analyze the number, length, frequency, and distribution of ROHs in the population. Candidate genes related to economic traits of meat rabbits were searched based on high-frequency ROH regions. After quality control filtering of genotype data, 380 F2 crossbred rabbits were identified with 78,579 SNPs and 42,018 ROHs on the autosomes. The fitting of the Logistic growth curve model showed that 49-day-old rabbits were a growth inflection point. Then, through genome-wide association studies, 10 SNP loci and seven growth trait candidate genes were found to be significantly related to body weight in meat rabbits at 84 days of age. In addition, we revealed the functional roles and locations of 20 candidate genes in the high-frequency ROH region associated with economic traits in meat rabbits. This study identified potential genes associated with growth and development in the high-frequency ROH region of meat rabbits. In this study, the identified candidate genes can be used as molecular markers for assisted selection in meat rabbits. At the same time, the inbreeding situation based on ROH assessment can provide reference for breeding and breeding preservation of meat rabbits.