Scotland's Rural College (SRUC), Department of Animal and Veterinary Sciences, The Roslin Institute Building, Edinburgh, United Kingdom.
The Roslin Institute and R(D)SVS, University of Edinburgh, Edinburgh, United Kingdom.
PLoS One. 2022 Aug 12;17(8):e0271053. doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0271053. eCollection 2022.
Concentration of production on a few commercial pig breeds has led to the marginalization of many native, numerically small breeds, increasing their risk of endangerment. In the UK, one such rare breed is the British Lop, a lop-eared breed, of similar origin to the Welsh breed. The objective of the present study was to address the genomic status of the British Lop and its relationship with other breeds and identify a small set of genomic markers that uniquely characterize and distinguish British Lop animals. Results have shown that the British Lop is a relatively distinct population with reduced genomic diversity and effective size consistent with its status as a rare breed. Furthermore, we demonstrated the genetic closeness of the British Lop to phenotypically similar breeds such as Landrace and Welsh as well Large White, Middle White and Pietrain. Finally, a set of 75 Single Nucleotide Polymorphisms distributed across multiple chromosomes were identified and validated as markers that can consistently distinguish British Lops from other closely related breeds. Results may inform breeding and management strategies aiming to enhance diversity as well as the development of a breed purity test.
生产集中在少数几个商业猪品种上，导致许多本地、数量较少的品种被边缘化，增加了它们濒危的风险。在英国，有一种罕见的品种是英国垂耳猪，它是一种垂耳猪，与威尔士品种有相似的起源。本研究的目的是确定英国垂耳猪的基因组状况及其与其他品种的关系，并确定一小部分能够唯一特征化和区分英国垂耳猪的基因组标记。结果表明，英国垂耳猪是一个相对独特的群体，基因组多样性和有效群体大小降低，这与其作为一个稀有品种的地位一致。此外，我们还证明了英国垂耳猪与表型相似的品种（如长白猪和威尔士猪）以及大白猪、中白猪和皮特兰猪之间的遗传关系非常密切。最后，确定了一组分布在多个染色体上的 75 个单核苷酸多态性作为标记，这些标记可以一致地区分英国垂耳猪和其他密切相关的品种。这些结果可以为旨在提高多样性的育种和管理策略以及品种纯度测试的开发提供信息。
