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Genomic regions and biological mechanisms underlying climatic resilience traits derived from automatically-recorded vaginal temperature in lactating sows under heat stress conditions

Authors :
Hui Wen
Jay S. Johnson
Henrique A. Mulim
Andre C. Araujo
Felipe E. De Carvalho
Artur O. Rocha
Yijian Huang
Francesco Tiezzi
Christian Maltecca
Allan P. Schinckel
Luiz F. Brito
Source :
Frontiers in Genetics, Vol 15 (2024)
Publication Year :
2024
Publisher :
Frontiers Media S.A., 2024.

Abstract

Climate change poses a growing threat to the livestock industry, impacting animal productivity, animal welfare, and farm management practices. Thus, enhancing livestock climatic resilience (CR) is becoming a key priority in various breeding programs. CR can be defined as the ability of an animal to be minimally affected or rapidly return to euthermia under thermally stressful conditions. The primary study objectives were to perform genome-wide association studies for 12 CR indicators derived from variability in longitudinal vaginal temperature in lactating sows under heat stress conditions. A total of 31 single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) located on nine chromosomes were considered as significantly associated with nine CR indicators based on different thresholds. Among them, only two SNPs were simultaneously identified for different CR indicators, SSC6:16,449,770 bp and SSC7:39,254,889 bp. These results highlighted the polygenic nature of CR indicators with small effects distributed across different chromosomes. Furthermore, we identified 434 positional genes associated with CR. Key candidate genes include SLC3A2, STX5, POLR2G, and GANAB, which were previously related to heat stress responses, protein folding, and cholesterol metabolism. Furthermore, the enriched KEGG pathways and Gene Ontology (GO) terms associated with these candidate genes are linked to stress responses, immune and inflammatory responses, neural system, and DNA damage and repair. The most enriched quantitative trait loci are related to “Meat and Carcass”, followed by “Production”, “Reproduction”, “Health”, and “Exterior (conformation and appearance)” traits. Multiple genomic regions were identified associated with different CR indicators, which reveals that CR is a highly polygenic trait with small effect sizes distributed across the genome. Many heat tolerance or HS related genes in our study, such as HSP90AB1, DMGDH, and HOMER1, have been identified. The complexity of CR encompasses a range of adaptive responses, from behavioral to cellular. These results highlight the possibility of selecting more heat-tolerant individuals based on the identified SNP for CR indicators.

Details

Language :
English
ISSN :
16648021
Volume :
15
Database :
Directory of Open Access Journals
Journal :
Frontiers in Genetics
Publication Type :
Academic Journal
Accession number :
edsdoj.7389ab26bcde4fda9f2d2253614c10a1
Document Type :
article
Full Text :
https://doi.org/10.3389/fgene.2024.1498380