Estimation of genetic parameters and genome scan for 15 semen characteristics traits of Holstein bulls

Abstract

A QTL detection experiment was performed in French dairy cattle to search for QTL related to male fertility. Ten families, involving a total of 515 bulls, were phenotyped for ejaculated volume and sperm concentration, number of spermatozoa, motility, velocity, percentage of motile spermatozoa after thawing and abnormal spermatozoa. A set of 148 microsatellite markers were used to realize a genome scan. First, genetic parameters were estimated for all traits. Semen production traits were found to have moderate heritabilities (from 0.15 to 0.30) while some of the semen quality traits such as motility had high heritabilities (close to 0.60). Genetic correlations among traits showed negative relationships between volume and concentration and between volume and most quality traits such as motility or abnormal sperm while correlations between concentration and these traits were rather favourable. Percentages of abnormal sperm were negatively related to quality traits, especially with motility and velocity of spermatozoa. Three QTL related to abnormal sperm frequencies were significant at p < 0.01. In total, 11 QTL (p < 0.05) were detected. However, the number of QTL detected was within the range of expected false positives. Because of the lack of power to find QTL in this design further analyses are required to confirm these QTL.

Genome-wide association study for semen volume and total number of sperm in Holstein-Friesian bulls

“…Previous studies were performed by whole genome analysis using microsatellite markers to determine Quantitative Trait Loci (QTLs) (Druet et al, 2009). This group found two QTLs for semen volume on chromosomes 22, the same which we found for our most significant SNPs.…”

“…Most of the studies on bull's semen refer to quality traits like motility and morphological abnormalities of sperm (Druet et al, 2009). Indeed, these traits have key value in assessing semen in AI companies.…”

“…Although semen volume and total number of sperm depend on many environmental factors (Mathevon et al, 1998), they also have substantial genetic component (Druet et al, 2009;Fortes et al, 2012Fortes et al, , 2013. So far, most of the research focused on genetics factors underling semen http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.anireprosci.2014.10.022 0378-4320/© 2014 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.…”

Female Fertility in French Dairy Breeds: Current Situation and Strategies for Improvement

“…This work done under collaboration between UNCEIA, INRA PRC Nouzilly and GABI allowed to identify several chromosomal regions associated with such variables [26].…”

Molecular cloning and sequence analysis of follicle-stimulating hormone beta polypeptide precursor cDNA from the bovine pituitary gland

“…So far, some QTL associated with sperm quality were detected in bulls (Druet et al, 2009) and boars Xing et al, 2009), and also some candidate genes are considered to be associated with male animal fertility traits, such as swine actin (Wimmers et al, 2005;Lin et al, 2006) and murine Capza3 (Geyer et al, 2009). Our previous findings showed that some bulls with numerous linked mutations in the FSHB gene, including 13 substitutions and 1 insertion in the upstream regulation region (5ꞌ-URR) and the coding region of exon 3, exhibited slightly lower serum FSH concentration, poor-quality semen, and low fertility (Dai et al, 2009).…”