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A Missense Mutation in the Rabbit Melanocortin 4 Receptor (MC4R) Gene is Associated with Finisching Weight in a Meat Rabbit Line

2013; Taylor & Francis; Volume: 24; Issue: 4 Linguagem: Inglês

10.1080/10495398.2013.781034

1532-2378

Luca Fontanesi, Emilio Scotti, Katarina Cisarova, Piero Di Battista, Stefania Dall’Olio, Daniela Fornasini, Andrea Frabetti,

Regulation of Appetite and Obesity

In this study we resequenced 1729 bp of the rabbit melanocortin 4 receptor (MC4 R) gene in 31 rabbits from different breeds/lines and identified ten polymorphisms: one was an indel and 9 were single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs). The indel and 5 SNPs were in the 5'-flanking region, 3 were synonymous SNPs and one was a missense mutation (c.101G>A; p.G34D), located in a conserved position of the extracellular tail of the MC4 R protein. The missense mutation was analyzed in a panel of 74 rabbits of different breeds and in 516 performance tested rabbits of a commercial paternal line under selection for growth efficiency. Association analysis indicated that rabbits with the less frequent genotype in this population (DD) had a lighter weight at 70 postnatal days than animals with genotype GD (P < 0.10) and animals with genotype GG (P < 0.05). This is the third study on candidate genes, after those on GH1 and IGF2 that reported a marker associated with finishing weight. Therefore, it seems that a candidate gene approach in rabbit based on previous information accumulated in other livestock species could be useful to identify genes explaining a fraction of variability of performance traits with potential application on rabbit breeding and selection.