A missense mutation in the rabbit melanocortin 4 receptor (MC4R) gene is associated with finishing weight in a meat rabbit line.
In this study we resequenced 1729 bp of the rabbit melanocortin 4 receptor (MC4 R) gene in 31 rabbits from different breeds/lines and identified ten polymorphisms: one was an indel and 9 were single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs). The indel and 5 SNPs were in the 5'-flanking region, 3 were synonymous SNPs and one was a missense mutation (c.101G>A; p.G34D), located in a conserved position of the extracellular tail of the MC4 R protein. The missense mutation was analyzed in a panel of 74 rabbits of different breeds and in 516 performance tested rabbits of a commercial paternal line under selection for growth efficiency. Association analysis indicated that rabbits with the less frequent genotype in this population (DD) had a lighter weight at 70 postnatal days than animals with genotype GD (P < 0.10) and animals with genotype GG (P < 0.05). This is the third study on candidate genes, after those on GH1 and IGF2 that reported a marker associated with finishing weight. Therefore, it seems that a candidate gene approach in rabbit based on previous information accumulated in other livestock species could be useful to identify genes explaining a fraction of variability of performance traits with potential application on rabbit breeding and selection.
a Department of Agricultural and Food Sciences (DISTAL), Division of Animal Sciences , University of Bologna , Bologna , Italy.
Luca
L
Fontanesi
Emilio
E
Scotti
Katarina
K
Cisarova
Piero
P
Di Battista
Stefania
S
Dall'olio
Daniela
D
Fornasini
Andrea
A
Frabetti
D000595:Amino Acid Sequence; D000818:Animals; D001835:Body Weight / Q000235:genetics*; D003198:Computer Simulation; D005260:Female; D058751:Livestock / Q000235:genetics; D008297:Male; D008460:Meat; D058977:Molecular Sequence Annotation; D008969:Molecular Sequence Data; D020125:Mutation, Missense; D010641:Phenotype; D020641:Polymorphism, Single Nucleotide; D011817:Rabbits; D044105:Receptor, Melanocortin, Type 4 / Q000235:genetics*
D044105:Receptor, Melanocortin, Type 4