Identification of Growth-Related SNPs and Candidate Genes in the Genome of Zig-Zag Eel (Mastacembelus armatus) by GWAS.

The zig-zag eel (Mastacembelus armatus) is an economically important aquaculture species in south China. Currently, the genome-wide association study (GWAS) for growth traits of zig-zag eel was first performed. A total of 175 zig-zag eels were measured for body height (BH), body length (BL), body weight (BW), body thickness (BT), head length (HL), and total length (TL) and genotyped using whole genome resequencing. After quality control, a total of 13,844,114 high-confidence SNPs were detected uniformly across 24 chromosomes. After GWAS, a total of 2, 1, 2, 2, 1, and 2 SNPs were significantly associated with BH, BL, BW, BT, HL, and TL traits, respectively. In addition, many candidate genes surrounding these SNPs have been shown to be closely associated with growth, including ppt1, cap1, lnr, and fgfr2. In all, these results lay a good foundation for exploring the molecular basis of growth regulation and molecular marker-assisted selection.