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A Genome Wide Detection of Quantitative Trait Loci on Pig Maternal Infanticide Behavior in a Large Scale White Duroc × Erhualian Resource Population

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Abstract

Maternal behavior around parturition is important to piglet survival. An extreme form of failure of maternal behavior, also called maternal infanticide, often occurs in some sows. This is defined as an active attack to piglets using the jaws, resulting in serious or fatal bite wounds within 24 h of birth. It leads to considerable economic losses to the pig industry and severe problems in pig welfare. In this study, maternal behaviors from 5 h before to 24 h after parturition were recorded in detail on 288 White Duroc × Erhualian intercross F2 sows over their three continuous farrowings. In the F2 population 12.8% gilts showed maternal infanticide in their first litter, while the incidences of maternal infanticide at their second and third farrowing reduced to 7.5% and 4.5%, respectively. All F2 sows were genotyped for 194 microsatellite markers spanning the whole pig genome. A whole genome linkage analysis was performed using the non-parametric linkage test by SimWalk2 software. The results identified that seven chromosome regions on SSC2, SSC6, SSC14, SSC15 and SSCX were significantly linked with maternal infanticide (P < 0.05). The quantitative trait loci (QTL) on SSC2 and SSCX achieved P < 0.01 significance level. The most promising QTLs, however, were detected on X chromosome where three peaks of negative logarithm of P-value located at marker SW980, SW2456 and SW1608. QTLs on SSC2 and SSCX from this experiment were consistent with published results from the Western commercial lines.

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Acknowledgments

This project was supported by National Basic Research Program of China (973 Program). Miguel Perez-Enciso is funded by grants AGL2007-65563-C02-01/GAN and PCI2006-A7-0523 (Spain). The authors are very greatful to Prof.Chris Haley for his very useful comments and suggestion.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Key Laboratory for Animal Biotechnology of Jiangxi Province and The Ministry of Agriculture of China, Jiangxi Agricultural University, 330045, Nanchang, Jiangxi Province, People’s Republic of China

    Congying Chen, Yuanmei Guo, Guangcheng Yang, Zhuqing Yang, Zhiyan Zhang, Bin Yang, Xueming Yan, Junwu Ma, Yanyu Duan & Lusheng Huang

  2. Institute of Veterinary Medicine, Georg-August-University of Goettingen, Burckhardtweg 2, 37077, Goettingen, Germany

    Bertram Brenig

  3. Dept Ciencia Animal idels Aliments, Facultat de Veterinaria, Universitat Autonoma de Barcelona, 08193, Bellaterra, Spain

    Miguel Perez-Enciso

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  1. Congying Chen
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  2. Yuanmei Guo
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  3. Guangcheng Yang
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  4. Zhuqing Yang
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  5. Zhiyan Zhang
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  6. Bin Yang
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  7. Xueming Yan
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  8. Miguel Perez-Enciso
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  9. Junwu Ma
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  10. Yanyu Duan
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  11. Bertram Brenig
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  12. Lusheng Huang
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Correspondence to Lusheng Huang.

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Edited by Stephen Maxson.

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Chen, C., Guo, Y., Yang, G. et al. A Genome Wide Detection of Quantitative Trait Loci on Pig Maternal Infanticide Behavior in a Large Scale White Duroc × Erhualian Resource Population. Behav Genet 39, 213–219 (2009). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10519-008-9252-x

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10519-008-9252-x

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