Study on candidate gene for fecundity traits in Xingjiang Cele black sheep

Abstract

The aim of the present study is to find a potential candidate gene for high fecundity in Cele black sheep. Polymerase chain reaction-restriction fragment length polymorphism (PCR-RFLP) technology was used to detect single nuclear polymorphism (SNP) of four candidate genes ( BMPR-IB , BMP15 , GDF9 , and ESRα ) in Cele black sheep. The results showed that (i) A-G mutation was found at 746 bp in BMPR-IB in which the frequencies of homozygote (BB), heterozygote (B+) and wild type (++) were 0.113, 0.471, and 0.416, respectively. Significant differences were observed in litter size between ++ and B+ (P 0.05). (iii) No polymorphism was found in four mutation sites ( FecX G , FecX B , FecX I , FecX H ) of BMP15 and in one mutation site ( FecG H ) of GDF9 gene. The results indicate that fecundity characteristic was positively correlated to BMPR-IB . However, there was no relation between fecundity characteristic and detected SNP sites of ESRα , BMP15 and GDF9 genes. These preliminary results showed that the BMPR-IB gene is either a major gene that influences the prolificacy in Cele black sheep or a molecular genetic marker in close linkage with such a gene. Key words : Cele black sheep, fecundity candidate gene, BMPR-IB, BMP15, GDF9 , ESRα.