A Genome-Wide Search of New Meat-Productivity Candidate Genes in a North Caucasian Meat and Wool Sheep Breed

The search for new genes that affect the growth and development of muscle tissue and are associated with meat productivity traits in sheep is an actual task. The implementation of this is inextricably linked with the prospects for the development of marker-assisted and genomic selection. The investigation presents data from a new approach in the detection of candidate genes for sheep meat productivity. Animal genotyping was performed using Ovine Infinium HD BeadChip 600K DNA, and an search for associations was performed using PLINK v1.07 software. As a result of the work, identified single-nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) that were significantly associated with phenotypic traits directly related to the level of meat productivity in the North Caucasian meat and wool sheep: height at the withers, live weight at birth, thickness of adipose tissue, and width of the loin eye. To search for candidate genes, 19 polymorphisms with the highest association reliability were selected. Determining the location of the analyzed SNPs made it possible to identify 16 new candidate genes associated with lifetime meat productivity traits in North Caucasian meat and wool sheep: CILK1, ENO4, CTPS2, GABRB2, SLC44A1, C12ORF45, SLC41A2, CASD1, SINE2, SLC35F1, RP, SH3KBP1, LRRIQ1, SWAP70, THBS, and FSIP. Animal genotyping for these genes should be used in marker-associated breeding to improve sheep meat productivity and study their effect on the phenotype.