a Department of Agricultural and Food Sciences (DISTAL), Division of Animal Sciences , University of Bologna , Bologna , Italy.
Anim Biotechnol. 2013;24(4):268-77. doi: 10.1080/10495398.2013.781034.
In this study we resequenced 1729 bp of the rabbit melanocortin 4 receptor (MC4 R) gene in 31 rabbits from different breeds/lines and identified ten polymorphisms: one was an indel and 9 were single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs). The indel and 5 SNPs were in the 5'-flanking region, 3 were synonymous SNPs and one was a missense mutation (c.101G>A; p.G34D), located in a conserved position of the extracellular tail of the MC4 R protein. The missense mutation was analyzed in a panel of 74 rabbits of different breeds and in 516 performance tested rabbits of a commercial paternal line under selection for growth efficiency. Association analysis indicated that rabbits with the less frequent genotype in this population (DD) had a lighter weight at 70 postnatal days than animals with genotype GD (P < 0.10) and animals with genotype GG (P < 0.05). This is the third study on candidate genes, after those on GH1 and IGF2 that reported a marker associated with finishing weight. Therefore, it seems that a candidate gene approach in rabbit based on previous information accumulated in other livestock species could be useful to identify genes explaining a fraction of variability of performance traits with potential application on rabbit breeding and selection.
在这项研究中，我们对来自不同品种/系的 31 只兔子的 1729 个碱基对的黑素皮质素 4 受体 (MC4R) 基因进行了重测序，并鉴定出了 10 个多态性：一个是插入/缺失突变，9 个是单核苷酸多态性 (SNP)。插入/缺失突变和 5 个 SNP 位于 5'-侧翼区，3 个是同义 SNP，1 个是错义突变 (c.101G>A; p.G34D)，位于 MC4R 蛋白胞外尾部的保守位置。在不同品种的 74 只兔子和经过生长效率选择的商业父系的 516 只性能测试兔子的一个小组中，对该错义突变进行了分析。关联分析表明，在该群体中较少见的基因型 (DD) 的兔子在 70 日龄时的体重比基因型 GD (P < 0.10) 和基因型 GG (P < 0.05) 的兔子更轻。这是继 GH1 和 IGF2 之后，第三项关于候选基因的研究报告了与肥育体重相关的标记。因此，基于其他家畜物种积累的先前信息，对兔子进行候选基因研究似乎可以用于鉴定能够解释部分性能性状变异性的基因，这可能对兔子的繁殖和选择具有潜在应用。
