Variation in the ovine gene and its effect on growth traits in Egyptian Barki sheep.

The aim of the present study was to detect the gene polymorphisms in Barki sheep at a variable region covering exon 13, intron 13 and the coding sequence in exon 14 and to test the association of these polymorphisms with growth traits. 122 Barki lambs were phenotyped for various growth traits, viz., birth weight (BW), weaning weight (WW), pre-weaning daily gain in weight (ADG1), post-weaning daily gain in weight (ADG2) and marketing bodyweight (MW). The polymerase chain reaction - single-strand conformational polymorphisms (PCR-SSCP) and DNA sequencing methods were used to identify the genetic variants in the gene. The associations between the variation in gene and growth traits were tested using a general linear model. Two variants ( and with gene frequencies of 0.64 and 0.36, respectively), and three genotypes (, and with frequencies of 0.37, 0.53 and 0.10, respectively) were detected. The association of genotype was significant (<0.05) with ADG2 and MW. It is concluded that genotype might be helpful for sheep breeders to produce fast-growing lambs. However, further studies are needed in a large population to confirm the association we found.