The Correlation Analysis Between BMP15, INHA Gene Polymorphism And The Growth And Reproductive Traits Of NingDu Yellow Chicken

The Ningdu yellow chicken is a famous indigenous broiler breed for the meat quality and earlier age of sexual maturity in the Jiangxi province. Sexual precocity is a complex trait affected by multiple genes. In order to explore the molecular mechanism of sexual precocity in this chicken breed, we performed a correlation analysis with a series of growth and reproduction traits via phenotyping the 195 Ningdu yellow chickens. Subsequently, a candidate gene approach was conducted in two genes including Bmp15 and INHA, which were cloned and resequenced in their exon regions to identify the variation, and then an association analysis between growth and reproduction traits and mutations was performed to elaborate the candidate genes effects on the earlier age of sexual maturity of the Ningdu yellow chicken. The major results were showed as follows:1. Significant differences were found in all of the correlation analysis between the growth and reproduction tratis, which indicated that the Ningdu yellow chicken in our study were growing and developing under normal regular pattern, futhermore, we also found that animalswith heavier body weight would get earlier age at first egg in the growing period. On the contrary, the lighter weight for the birds would get first eggs at an older age.2. According to the resequencing, a total of twelve single nucleotide polymorphisms were identified in the coding and coding-neighbor regeions of the BMP15 gene, in which four loci including c.34C>T, c.473G>A, c.656T>C and c.709G>A were belong to the missense mutation. Moreover, two SNP at c.473G>A and c.656T>C were firstly discovered in the chicken breed. In the INHA gene, twenty-one SNPs were found in the cloned region, one of which named c.619C>T is a missense mutation locus.3. Association analysis between the tested traits and 12 SNPs of BMP15 gene showed that most of the mutations was significant affected the growth of Ningdu yellow chicken,suggesting that BMP15 may play an important role in the chicken growth and development.Moreover, birds with a locus of c.633C>T would have a more prominent crown height,crown long and body weight.4. Multiple mutations identified in the INHA gene were significantly associated with the growth performances in the Ningdu yellow chickens, indicating that the gene may have an important effect on the growth and development of the chickens. Furthermore, the c.849C>T in the INHA gene was extremely significant associated with a series of performances including the body weight, age at first egg, crown height, tibia length, weight at 70 days of age, weight at 98 days age, crown height, and crown length.