title: Genome-wide association study dissects genetic architecture underlying longitudinal egg weights in chickens.
abstract: BACKGROUND
  As a major economic trait in chickens, egg weight (EW) receives widespread interests in breeding, production and consumption. However, limited information is available for underlying genetic architecture of longitudinal trend in EW. Herein, we measured EWs at nine time points from onset of laying to 60 week of age, and conducted comprehensive genome-wide association studies (GWAS) in 1,534 F2 hens derived from reciprocal crosses between White Leghorn and Dongxiang chickens.
  
  
  RESULTS
  Egg weights at all ages except the first egg weight (FEW) exhibited high SNP-based heritability estimates (0.47~0.60). Strong pair-wise genetic correlations (0.77~1.00) were found among all EWs. Nine separate univariate genome-wide screens suggested 73 signals showing significant associations with longitudinal EWs. After multivariate and conditional analyses, four variants on three chromosomes remained independent contributions. The minor alleles at two loci exerted consistent and positive substitution effects on EWs, and other two were negative. The four loci together accounted for 3.84 % of the phenotypic variance for FEW and 7.29~11.06 % for EWs from 32 to 60 week of age. We obtained five candidate genes, of which NCAPG harbors a non-synonymous SNP (rs14491030) causing a valine-to-alanine amino-acid substitution. Genome partitioning analysis indicated a strong linear correlation between the variance explained by each chromosome and its length, which provided evidence that EW follows a highly polygenic nature of inheritance.
  
  
  CONCLUSIONS
  Identification of significant genetic causes that together implicate EWs at different ages will greatly advance our understanding of the genetic basis behind longitudinal EWs, and would be helpful to illuminate the future breeding direction on how to select desired egg size.
authors.affiliation: Department of Animal Genetics and Breeding, College of Animal Science and Technology, China Agricultural University, Beijing, 100193, China. yiguoqiang20@hotmail.com.
authors.forename: Guoqiang
authors.initials: G
authors.lastname: Yi
authors.affiliation: Jiangsu Institute of Poultry Science, Yangzhou, Jiangsu, 225125, China. shenman2005@163.com.
authors.forename: Manman
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Shen
authors.affiliation: Department of Animal Genetics and Breeding, College of Animal Science and Technology, China Agricultural University, Beijing, 100193, China. amstrongyuan@163.com.
authors.forename: Jingwei
authors.initials: J
authors.lastname: Yuan
authors.affiliation: Department of Animal Genetics and Breeding, College of Animal Science and Technology, China Agricultural University, Beijing, 100193, China. suncongjiao@163.com.
authors.forename: Congjiao
authors.initials: C
authors.lastname: Sun
authors.affiliation: Department of Animal Genetics and Breeding, College of Animal Science and Technology, China Agricultural University, Beijing, 100193, China. dzy806@163.com.
authors.forename: Zhongyi
authors.initials: Z
authors.lastname: Duan
authors.affiliation: Jiangsu Institute of Poultry Science, Yangzhou, Jiangsu, 225125, China. quliang19820603@163.com.
authors.forename: Liang
authors.initials: L
authors.lastname: Qu
authors.affiliation: Jiangsu Institute of Poultry Science, Yangzhou, Jiangsu, 225125, China. 569843180@qq.com.
authors.forename: Taocun
authors.initials: T
authors.lastname: Dou
authors.affiliation: Jiangsu Institute of Poultry Science, Yangzhou, Jiangsu, 225125, China. 779701121@qq.com.
authors.forename: Meng
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Ma
authors.affiliation: Jiangsu Institute of Poultry Science, Yangzhou, Jiangsu, 225125, China. lujian1617@163.com.
authors.forename: Jian
authors.initials: J
authors.lastname: Lu
authors.affiliation: Jiangsu Institute of Poultry Science, Yangzhou, Jiangsu, 225125, China. smileleaf@yeah.net.
authors.forename: Jun
authors.initials: J
authors.lastname: Guo
authors.affiliation: Department of Animal Genetics and Breeding, College of Animal Science and Technology, China Agricultural University, Beijing, 100193, China. csr@cau.edu.cn.
authors.forename: Sirui
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: Chen
authors.affiliation: Department of Animal Genetics and Breeding, College of Animal Science and Technology, China Agricultural University, Beijing, 100193, China. quluj@cau.edu.cn.
authors.forename: Lujiang
authors.initials: L
authors.lastname: Qu
authors.affiliation: Jiangsu Institute of Poultry Science, Yangzhou, Jiangsu, 225125, China. sqbreeding@126.com.
authors.forename: Kehua
authors.initials: K
authors.lastname: Wang
authors.affiliation: Department of Animal Genetics and Breeding, College of Animal Science and Technology, China Agricultural University, Beijing, 100193, China. nyang@cau.edu.cn.
authors.forename: Ning
authors.initials: N
authors.lastname: Yang
mesh_terms: D000483:Alleles; D000818:Animals; D002645:Chickens; D004531:Eggs; D056726:Genetic Association Studies; D014644:Genetic Variation; D055106:Genome-Wide Association Study; D023281:Genomics; D005838:Genotype; D058977:Molecular Sequence Annotation; D010641:Phenotype; D020641:Polymorphism, Single Nucleotide; D040641:Quantitative Trait Loci; D019655:Quantitative Trait, Heritable