Association of Single Nucleotide Polymorphisms of the Insulin Gene with Chicken Early Growth and Fat Deposition

Abstract

Growth rate, body composition, and fat deposition are important traits in chickens. Insulin plays important roles in hepatic cells, muscle cells, and adipose tissue cells. The purpose of the present study was to analyze association of the insulin (INS) gene with chicken growth and body composition traits. Using a F2 design resource population constructed with the crossing of Chinese native Xinghua chickens and White Recessive Rock chickens, the association of 4 single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNP; A+428G, C+1549T, T+3737C, and A+3971G) of INS gene with 13 growth and body composition traits was studied. The T+3737C genotypes were significantly associated with small intestine length (P = 0.0002), and the A+3971G genotypes were significantly associated with early growth (hatch weight and BW at 28 d of age) (P < 0.0001), breast angle (P = 0.0002), and small intestine length (P < 0.0001). None of the 4 SNP was significantly associated with abdominal fat pad weight (P > 0.05). The haplotypes based on the 4 SNP were also significantly associated with early growth (hatch weight and BW at 28 d of age; P < 0.0001) and breast angle (P < 0.0001) but not with small intestine length (P = 0.0505). These results suggested that variation of the insulin gene was significantly associated with chicken early growth but not with fat deposition. In addition, the data from the present study supported the inference that both the one-SNP-at-a-time and the haplotype-based approaches have their own advantages and disadvantages when association analysis of one SNP and haplotypes with chicken complex traits was conducted.

Genetic effects analysis of myeloid leukemia factor 2 and T cell receptor-β on resistance to coccidiosis in chickens

“…In chicken, genomic sequences encoding myeloid leukemia factor 1 (MLF1) and MLF2 were identified by bioinformatics approaches. Poultry QTL mapping studies were initially undertaken to identify genes associated with economically important traits such as growth rate, feed efficiency, egg production, carcass characteristics, and disease resistance (Liu et al, 2001;Lei et al, 2005;Qiu et al, 2006). For infectious diseases, numerous genes that control the response of chickens to Salmonella have been identified by SNP analysis (Hu et al, 1997;Mariani et al, 2001;Beaumont et al, 2003;Hasenstein et al, 2006).…”

A novel single-nucleotide polymorphism of thevisfatin gene and its associations with performance traits in the chicken

“…SNPs of GH (Feng et al 1997), GHR (Feng et al 1997(Feng et al , 1998, IGF-I and -II genes (Amills et al 2003;Yan et al 2002) have been reported to be associated with chicken growth, feeding, and egg-laying traits. Qiu et al (2006) found that variation in the insulin gene was significantly associated with the early growth of chickens. Some of the above-mentioned genes could cause bias of the visfatin gene's effect, because of segregation in the F 2 population.…”

Association of single nucleotide polymorphisms in the insulin and growth hormone gene with growth traits of Mia Chicken

“…Recently, application of molecular genetics in livestock breed selection for improvement of a number of important production traits has allowed obtaining better selection performances than phenotypes-only based methods. The selection based on candidate genes not only improves the selection of the favorable alleles, but also significantly shortens the selection time (Dekkers, 2004;Nadaf et al 2007;Qiu et al, 2006;R. Jiang et al, 2004).…”

“…Jiang et al, 2004). The chicken insulin (INS) and growth hormone (GH) genes are among the candidate genes for growth performance in chickens (Lei et al, 2007;Nie et al, 2005;Qiu et al, 2006;Zhang et al, 2007). Insulin is a peptide hormone secreted by the β cells of the pancreatic islets of Langerhans.…”