Effect Analysis of Heart Fatty Acid-Binding Protein Gene Assisted Selection on Intramuscular Fat Content in Chicken

Fatty deposition in organism is an important factor which influences meat quality. Previously, Heart Fatty Acid-Binding Protein (H-FABP) gene was studied as a candidate gene which having effect on Intramuscular Fat content (IMF). In current study, we chose four SNPs loci (g.260T>C, g.675G>A, g.783C>T and g.1198T>C) of H-FABP which have been proved to have distinct correlation with IMF as molecular markers to scan SNPs in a new breeding Chinese yellow-feather broiler population. Researchers allocated adaptive individuals into high-IMF group and low-IMF group according to the haplotypes which were constructed of genotypes at four SNP sites of each individual in F, generation and these haplotypes had been proved to be the preponderant or recessive haplotype. The core group was chose from the F, generation based on the traditional breeding method. And then, we detected the genotypes of the four loci by SNPs screening and analyzed the selection effect in F, generation which were obtained from mating and crossing within each group. Results indicated that the preponderance alleles were changed at Locus 1, 3 and 4 in the three groups of F, and there were no significant differences in IMF among the three groups (p>0.05). However, the IMF of the core group and the low fat group was higher than which of high fat group. The result of variance analysis showed that there were no significant difference in the effect of the different genotypes of the four SNPs on IMF (p>0.05). The four loci on the H-FABP gene in the research were not suitable as candidate markers to select IMF in this yellow-feather broiler strain.