Abstract

Aryl Hydrocarbon Receptor (AHR) is a member of the PER-ARNT-SIM (PAS) family, which could mediate various biological processes, for instance, the balance of the immune system, cell proliferation, differentiation, vascular tissue remodeling and reproduction ability regulation. A previous research showed that the AHR gene exerted important functions on the pig reproduction, implying that it could serve as a candidate gene related to animal reproductive traits. Here, the aim of this work was to identify potential insertion/deletion (indel) mutations of the AHR gene in three sheep breeds and analyze the associations between these mutations and reproductive traits. Results showed that a 24-bp indel was uncovered three genotypes (II, ID and DD) in the Australian White sheep (AuW) and Lanzhou fat-tail sheep (LZFT) population, while there were only two genotypes (ID and DD) in Luxi black-headed sheep (LXBH). Moreover, the Fisher's exact test showed that the 24-bp indel mutation was significantly associated with litter size and live litter size in AuW sheep (Fisher’s p < 0.05). Therefore, the 24-bp indel of sheep AHR gene can contribute to sheep marker-assisted selection breeding and further improve the sheep reproductive performance.

摘要

Aryl Hydrocarbon Receptor (AHR) 是 PER-ARNT-SIM (PAS) 家族的一员，可介导多种生物过程，例如免疫系统的平衡、细胞增殖、分化、血管组织重塑和生殖能力调节. 前期研究表明，AHR基因对猪的繁殖具有重要作用，可作为动物繁殖性状相关的候选基因。在这里，这项工作的目的是确定AHR的潜在插入/删除 (indel) 突变三个绵羊品种的基因，并分析这些突变与繁殖性状之间的关联。结果表明，在澳大利亚白羊（AuW）和兰州肥尾羊（LZFT）群体中，一个24-bp的插入缺失被三个基因型（II、ID和DD）发现，而在澳大利亚白羊（AuW）和兰州肥尾羊（LZFT）中只有两个基因型（ID和DD）。鲁西黑头羊（LXBH）。此外，Fisher 精确检验表明，24-bp 插入缺失突变与 AuW 绵羊的窝产仔数和活窝产仔数显着相关 (Fisher's p  < 0.05)。因此，绵羊AHR基因的24bp插入缺失有助于绵羊分子标记辅助选择育种，进一步提高绵羊繁殖性能。