Wen Hui, Johnson Jay S, Mulim Henrique A, Araujo Andre C, De Carvalho Felipe E, Rocha Artur O, Huang Yijian, Tiezzi Francesco, Maltecca Christian, Schinckel Allan P, Brito Luiz F
Department of Animal Sciences, Purdue University, West Lafayette, IN, United States.
Division of Animal Sciences, College of Agriculture, Food and Natural Resources, University of Missouri, Columbia, MO, United States.
Front Genet. 2024 Nov 7;15:1498380. doi: 10.3389/fgene.2024.1498380. eCollection 2024.
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 , , , and , 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 , , and , 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.
气候变化对畜牧业构成了日益严重的威胁，影响着动物生产力、动物福利和农场管理实践。因此，提高家畜气候适应力（CR）正成为各种育种计划的关键优先事项。CR可定义为动物在热应激条件下受影响最小或迅速恢复正常体温的能力。主要研究目标是针对热应激条件下泌乳母猪纵向阴道温度变异性得出的12个CR指标进行全基因组关联研究。基于不同阈值，位于9条染色体上的总共31个单核苷酸多态性（SNP）被认为与9个CR指标显著相关。其中，仅两个SNP被不同的CR指标同时鉴定出来，即SSC6:16,449,770 bp和SSC7:39,254,889 bp。这些结果突出了CR指标的多基因性质，其微小效应分布在不同染色体上。此外，我们鉴定出434个与CR相关的位置基因。关键候选基因包括 、 、 和 ，这些基因先前与热应激反应、蛋白质折叠和胆固醇代谢有关。此外，与这些候选基因相关的富集KEGG通路和基因本体（GO）术语与应激反应、免疫和炎症反应、神经系统以及DNA损伤和修复相关。最富集的数量性状位点与“肉和胴体”相关，其次是“生产”、“繁殖”、“健康”和“外观（体型和外貌）”性状。鉴定出多个与不同CR指标相关的基因组区域，这表明CR是一种高度多基因的性状，其微小效应大小分布在整个基因组中。我们的研究中鉴定出了许多耐热或与热应激相关的基因，如 、 和 。CR的复杂性涵盖了从行为到细胞的一系列适应性反应。这些结果突出了基于鉴定出的CR指标SNP选择更耐热个体的可能性。
