title: Joint QTL mapping and gene expression analysis identify positional candidate genes influencing pork quality traits.
abstract: Meat quality traits have an increasing importance in the pig industry because of their strong impact on consumer acceptance. Herewith, we have combined phenotypic and microarray expression data to map loci with potential effects on five meat quality traits recorded in the longissimus dorsi (LD) and gluteus medius (GM) muscles of 350 Duroc pigs, i.e. pH at 24 hours post-mortem (pH24), electric conductivity (CE) and muscle redness (a*), lightness (L*) and yellowness (b*). We have found significant genome-wide associations for CE of LD on SSC4 (~104 Mb), SSC5 (~15 Mb) and SSC13 (~137 Mb), while several additional regions were significantly associated with meat quality traits at the chromosome-wide level. There was a low positional concordance between the associations found for LD and GM traits, a feature that reflects the existence of differences in the genetic determinism of meat quality phenotypes in these two muscles. The performance of an eQTL search for SNPs mapping to the regions associated with meat quality traits demonstrated that the GM a* SSC3 and pH24SSC17 QTL display positional concordance with cis-eQTL regulating the expression of several genes with a potential role on muscle metabolism.
authors.affiliation: Center for Research in Agricultural Genomics (CSIC-IRTA-UAB-UB), Campus Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona, Bellaterra 08193, Spain.
authors.forename: Rayner
authors.initials: R
authors.lastname: González-Prendes
authors.affiliation: Animal Breeding and Genetics Program, Institut de Recerca i Tecnologia Agroalimentàries (IRTA), Torre Marimon, Caldes de Montbui 08140, Spain.
authors.forename: Raquel
authors.initials: R
authors.lastname: Quintanilla
authors.affiliation: Center for Research in Agricultural Genomics (CSIC-IRTA-UAB-UB), Campus Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona, Bellaterra 08193, Spain.
authors.forename: Angela
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: Cánovas
authors.affiliation: Center for Research in Agricultural Genomics (CSIC-IRTA-UAB-UB), Campus Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona, Bellaterra 08193, Spain.
authors.forename: Arianna
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: Manunza
authors.affiliation: Center for Research in Agricultural Genomics (CSIC-IRTA-UAB-UB), Campus Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona, Bellaterra 08193, Spain.|CAPES Foundation, Ministry of Education of Brazil, Brasilia D. F., Zip Code 70.040-020, Brazil.
authors.forename: Tainã
authors.initials: T
authors.lastname: Figueiredo Cardoso
authors.affiliation: Departament de Ciència Animal i dels Aliments, Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona, Bellaterra 08193, Spain.
authors.forename: Jordi
authors.initials: J
authors.lastname: Jordana
authors.affiliation: Animal Breeding and Genetics Program, Institut de Recerca i Tecnologia Agroalimentàries (IRTA), Torre Marimon, Caldes de Montbui 08140, Spain.
authors.forename: José Luis
authors.initials: JL
authors.lastname: Noguera
authors.affiliation: Department of Animal Science, University of Lleida - Agrotecnio Center, Lleida 25198, Spain.
authors.forename: Ramona N
authors.initials: RN
authors.lastname: Pena
authors.affiliation: Center for Research in Agricultural Genomics (CSIC-IRTA-UAB-UB), Campus Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona, Bellaterra 08193, Spain.
authors.forename: Marcel
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Amills
mesh_terms: D000818:Animals; D020869:Gene Expression Profiling; D055106:Genome-Wide Association Study; D018482:Muscle, Skeletal / Q000378:metabolism; D020641:Polymorphism, Single Nucleotide; D040641:Quantitative Trait Loci; D019655:Quantitative Trait, Heritable; D000069466:Red Meat / Q000592:standards*; D013552:Swine / Q000235:genetics*