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Molecular characterization and an 80-bp indel polymorphism within the prolactin receptor (PRLR) gene and its associations with chicken growth and carcass traits

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Abstract

The prolactin receptor (PRLR), a type I cytokine receptor, must bind prolactin (PRL) to act on target cells to mediate various physiological functions, including reproduction and lactation. This study identified an 80-bp insertion/deletion (indel) polymorphism in the 3′-untranslated region (3′-UTR) of the chicken PRLR gene in 3736 individuals from 15 breeds and analyzed its associations with growth and carcass traits in an F2 resource population. The results of the association analysis indicated that the 80-bp indel polymorphism was significantly (P < 0.05) or very significantly (P < 0.01) associated with multiple growth and carcass traits, such as body weight, leg weight, and shank length. In addition, we found that during the breeding process of commercial laying hens and commercial broilers, the 80-bp indel locus was artificially selected for the II genotype. Together, our findings reveal that this 80-bp indel polymorphism has potential as a new molecular marker for marker-assisted selection of chicken growth and carcass traits.

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Acknowledgments

This study was funded by the NSFC-Henan Joint Grant (U1804107), the Key Science and Technology Research Project of Henan Province (151100110800), the National Natural Science Foundation of China (31572356), and the Program for Innovation Research Team of the Ministry of Education (IRT16R23).

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  1. Ke Liang and Xiangnan Wang contributed equally to this work.

Authors and Affiliations

  1. College of Animal Science and Veterinary Medicine, Henan Agricultural University, Zhengzhou, 450046, China

    Ke Liang, Xiangnan Wang, Xiaoxiao Tian, Rui Geng, Wenya Li, Zhenzhu Jing, Ruili Han, Yadong Tian, Xiaojun Liu, Xiangtao Kang & Zhuanjian Li

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  1. Ke Liang
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  2. Xiangnan Wang
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Correspondence to Zhuanjian Li.

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13205_2019_1827_MOESM1_ESM.docx

Supplementary material 1 (DOCX 791 kb) Table S1 mRNA and amino acid information of the PRLR gene from 16 species. Table S2 Websites and purposes for bioinformatic analyses. Fig. S1 Hydrophilicity and hydrophobicity analyses. Fig. S2 Signal peptide prediction. Fig. S3 Transmembrane domain prediction. Fig. S4 Phosphorylation site prediction. Fig. S5 Secondary structure prediction. Note: Blue represents α helix, green represents β turn, red represents extended strand, and orange represents random coil.

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Liang, K., Wang, X., Tian, X. et al. Molecular characterization and an 80-bp indel polymorphism within the prolactin receptor (PRLR) gene and its associations with chicken growth and carcass traits. 3 Biotech 9, 296 (2019). https://doi.org/10.1007/s13205-019-1827-0

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s13205-019-1827-0

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