Growth hormone and prolactin belong to the class of peptide hormones that have a wide range of regulatory functions. In this study, polymorphisms of growth hormone receptor (GHR) and prolactin (PRL) genes were analysed as candidate genes, which are responsible for the litter size in Australian White (AUW) sheep. According to the statistical analyses results, the polymorphism information content (PIC) values of the PRL‐P1‐ins‐23 bp, GHR‐P2‐del‐23 bp and GHR‐P8‐del‐23 bp were 0.371, 0.366 and 0.375, respectively, which indicates the high genetic polymorphism in AUW sheep. Moreover, all indel loci are not conformed to the HWE (p < .05). Further, our findings revealed that the PRL‐P1‐ins‐23 bp polymorphism in the ovine PRL gene was significantly related to the first parity litter size (p = .001) and the DD genotype displaying the highest genotypic mean. Meanwhile, the GHR‐P2‐del‐23 bp and GHR‐P8‐23 bp indels in the ovine GHR gene were significantly correlated with first parity litter size (p < .05), and the individuals with the genotype II showed significantly higher litter size than others. Collectively, these results demonstrated that our findings could be useful for future sheep breeding strategies based on the molecular‐assisted selection (MAS).

中文翻译：

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PRL和GHR基因内的Indel变体与绵羊产仔数有关。

生长激素和催乳激素属于具有广泛调节功能的肽类激素。在这项研究中，分析了生长激素受体（GHR）和催乳素（PRL）基因的多态性作为候选基因，这些基因负责澳大利亚白（AUW）绵羊的产仔数。根据统计分析结果，PRL‐P1‐ins‐23 bp，GHR‐P2‐del‐23 bp和GHR‐P8‐del‐23 bp的多态信息含量（PIC）值分别为0.371、0.366和0.375，分别表明AUW绵羊具有高遗传多态性。而且，所有插入缺失位点均不符合HWE（p  <.05）。此外，我们的研究结果表明，绵羊PRL中PRL-P1-ins-23 bp多态性该基因与第一胎产仔数（p  = .001）和显示最高基因型平均值的DD基因型显着相关。同时，绵羊GHR基因中的GHR-P2-del-23 bp和GHR-P8-23 bp插入缺失与第一胎产仔数显着相关（p  <.05），基因型II的个体显示出较高的产仔数。大小比别人大。总的来说，这些结果表明我们的发现对于基于分子辅助选择（MAS）的未来绵羊育种策略可能是有用的。