Discovery of SNPs in the swine nerve growth factor gene.

This study was aimed to search genetic variants for the swine nerve growth factor gene that associated with regulation of proliferation and differentiation of nervous systems. The swine nerve growth factor gene was screened with 5 primer sets for random populations of crossbred pigs born 2005-2007 at National Institute of Animal Science (NIAS). To verify genetic variants of miniature pigs, a total of 288,000 BAC clones generated from NIAS in 2007 were used. The selection of primer sequences was based on sequences of the swine in GenBank (L31898), and genetic variants have been discovered in the crossbred population positioned at 381 (A/C), 412 (C/T), 422 (G/A), 468 (G/C), 496 (A/G), 538 (T/C), 540 (G/A), and 547 (A/G) showing substitutions of amino acids. The identified sequences of miniature pigs including SNPs were submitted into GenBank with an accession number (GQ423508). The sequence alignment conducted to compare genetic distances between species, revealing not many high similarities between swine and human as approximately 0.89 that was a little bit high value than expected. Consequently, we suggest that the identified SNPs of the swine NGF gene may be used in the future to identify genetic markers in coding regions, regarding explanations of phenotypic variations.