Genome-wide association study of body weight in Australian Merino sheep reveals an orthologous region on OAR6 to human and bovine genomic regions affecting height and weight

Abstract

The GWAS analysis detected 39 SNPs associated with BW in sheep and a major QTL region was identified on OAR6. In several other mammalian species, regions that are syntenic with this region have been found to be associated with body size traits, which may reflect that the underlying biological mechanisms share a common ancestry. These findings should facilitate the discovery of causative variants for BW and contribute to marker-assisted selection.