Previous work showed that the Texel muscling QTL (TM-QTL) results in pronounced hypertrophy in the loin muscle, with the largest phenotypic effects observed in lambs inheriting a single copy of the allele from the sire. As the loin runs parallel to the spinal vertebrae, and the development of muscle and bone are closely linked, the primary aim of this study was to investigate if there were any subsequent associations between TM-QTL inheritance and underlying spine characteristics (vertebrae number, VN; spine region length, SPL; average length of individual vertebrae, VL) of the thoracic, lumbar, and thoracolumbar spine regions. Spine characteristics were measured from X-ray computed tomography (CT) scans for 142 purebred Texel lambs which had been previously genotyped. Least-squares means were significantly different between genotype groups for lumbar and thoracic VN and lumbar SPL. Similarly for these traits, contrasts were shown to be significant for particular modes of gene action but overall were inconclusive. In general, the results showed little evidence that spine trait phenotypes were associated with differences in loin muscling associated with the different TM-QTL genotypes.

中文翻译：

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Texel 肌肉 QTL (TM-QTL) 对纯种 Texel 羔羊脊柱特征的影响

先前的研究表明，Texel 肌肉 QTL (TM-QTL) 导致腰部肌肉明显肥大，在继承公牛等位基因的单个拷贝的羔羊中观察到最大的表型效应。由于腰部与脊椎平行，肌肉和骨骼的发育密切相关，本研究的主要目的是调查 TM-QTL 遗传与潜在脊柱特征（椎骨数，VN）之间是否存在任何后续关联。 ；脊柱区域长度，SPL；胸椎、腰椎和胸腰椎区域的单个椎骨的平均长度，VL)。通过对 142 只纯种 Texel 羔羊的 X 射线计算机断层扫描 (CT) 扫描测量脊柱特征，这些羔羊之前已进行过基因分型。腰椎和胸椎 VN 和腰椎 SPL 的基因型组之间的最小二乘均值显着不同。类似地，对于这些特征，对比被证明对于特定的基因作用模式是显着的，但总体而言尚无定论。总的来说，结果几乎没有证据表明脊柱性状表型与不同 TM-QTL 基因型相关的腰部肌肉差异有关。