Research paperExpression of ovine CTNNA3 and CAP2 genes and their association with growth traits
Introduction
CTNNA3 (α-T-catenin) is a protein coding gene. CTNNA3 encodes a protein that belongs to the alpha-catenin family (Janssens et al., 2001). αT-catenin is one of three α-catenin subtypes in mammals (Scott and Yap, 2006). α-catenin is a key cytoplasmic molecules that is believed to be necessary for the maintenance of tissue morphogenesis, because it can interact with cadherin-binding partners β-catenin, γ-catenin and actin cytoskeleton (Drees et al., 2005). Cell–cell adhesion function is very important for tissue development during fetal life (Edelman, 1986) and immune system (Bell, 1983). Some studies have shown that α-catenin is necessary for junction remodeling and assembly in the newborn heart (Li et al., 2015), and CTNNA3 is vital for the formation of stretch resistant cell–cell adhesion complexes. However, the role of CTNNA3 gene in sheep growth traits is not clear.
Cyclase associated protein (CAP) is a highly conserved protein during evolution, consisting of 474–551 amino acid residues, and plays an important role in cell polarity and development by regulating the actin cytoskeleton (Kosmas et al., 2015). In mammals, CAP1 and CAP2 are two homologues of CAP (Matviw et al., 1992, Yu et al., 1994, Swiston et al., 1995). CAP1 plays a role in endocytosis and cell motility (Bertling et al., 2004), and is present on stress fibers and in F-actin-rich regions (Peche et al., 2007). The similarity between CAP1 and CAP2 was approximately 76%, knocking out the CAP2 gene in mice resulted in a decrease in body weight and survival rate (Kosmas et al., 2015). Additionally, in myofibrils lacking CAP2, the cooperativity of calcium regulated force development is reduced (Kosmas et al., 2015).
Sheep is an important livestock species, which have the characteristics of tame and timid, the world's mutton production is 9.261 million tons, making it the fourth largest meat variety in the world (Feng et al., 2020). Lamb is popular in the market because it has lean meat, less fat and is easy to digest (Zhang et al., 2015). Hu sheep is a famous fecund breed in China with year-round estrus, rapid growth, early sexual maturity, high fecundity, and an average litter size of 2.06 (Feng et al., 2018). Hu sheep are mainly distributed in Jiangsu and Zhejiang Provinces and Shanghai in China. As was known to all, growth traits (body weight, body height, body length, chest circumference, etc) are important quantitative traits and has vital impacts on the profitability. Hence, the way we can improve the growth traits of sheep has become a focus of research in the field of animal husbandry. In this study, we investigate the relationship between single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) of CTNNA3 and CAP2 genes and growth traits, and their combined effect with growth traits, which may provide useful information for Hu sheep breeding and for the selection of growth traits.
Section snippets
Statement of ethics
The present study was performed according to the experimental procedures approved by the Animal Care and Use Committee of Biological Research of Gansu Province, China. The Ethics Committee of Gansu Agricultural University approved the sample collection and experimental protocols (permit number for conducting animal experiments: NO. 2012-2-159).
Experimental animals and DNA extraction
The study animal were collected from 1346 male Hu sheep in Minqin Defu Agriculture Co.Ltd. (Gansu, China). They were purchased from Wuwei Pukang Sheep
SNP scanning of ovine CTNNA3 and CAP2 genes
The 469 bp and 309 bp PCR products of the CTNNA3 and CAP2 genes was amplified from ten mixed Hu sheep DNA samples by primer pairs in Table 1 (Fig. 1). The PCR products were used to identify SNPs of the CTNNA3 and CAP2 genes. In the ovine CTNNA3 gene, a A to G mutation was observed at position 2,018,018 of the intron 15. In the ovine CAP2 gene, the SNP (T/C) was detected in intron 1 at genomic locus 8588.
Genotyping and allele frequency analysis
The SNPs at g.2018018 A > G and g.8588 T > C of CTNNA3 and CAP2 genes were genotyped using
Discussion
Single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) are nucleotide changes at a single genomic site between important subgroups of a population, and the major source of variation in genome is SNPs. As molecular markers, SNPs have become increasingly attractive because they are associated with many important production traits in livestock (Benavides et al., 2016). Missense mutations occur in the coding regions, causing translation of a defective protein, and have been linked to many diseases (Lee et al., 2008
Conclusions
In summary, this study indicated that CTNNA3 g.2018018 A > G and CAP2 g.8588 T > C was significantly associated with growth traits (body weight, body height, body length and chest circumference). And these two genes have a combined effect on growth traits in Hu sheep population. CTNNA3 expression level in liver and lung were significantly higher than those in other tissues, CAP2 expression level in bone, heart, liver, lung and duodenum were significantly higher than those in other tissues.
Author contributions
Weimin Wang, Fadi Li, Xiaoxue Zhang and Liming Zhao conceived and designed the study; Lvfeng Yuan, Yukun Zhang, Yuan Zhao, Qizhi Song, Jianghui Wang, Bubo Zhou, Wenxin Li and Changchun Lin collected samples; Liming Zhao, Deyin Zhang, Xiaolong Li, Jiangbo Cheng and Dan Xu performed the experiments and analyzed the data; Liming Zhao wrote the paper; Weimin Wang revised the manuscript.
Declaration of Competing Interest
The authors declare that they have no known competing financial interests or personal relationships that could have appeared to influence the work reported in this paper.
Acknowledgements
This work was supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (31960653), the National for Joint Research on Improved Breeds of Livestock and Poultry (19200140), and the Gansu Province Modern Silk Road Cold and Arid Agriculture Special.
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