Genetic Effects of Single Nucleotide Polymorphisms in the Goat GDF9 Gene on Prolificacy: True or False Positive?

摘要

As an important regulator factor, which was secreted by female oocytes, the growth differentiation factor 9 ( ) plays an essential role during the growth and differentiation of ovarian follicles. Single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) within the gene have been found to be involved in reproductive traits in livestock, and some of these mutations have been used as the effective makers in animal molecular breeding. However, it is remarkable that the SNPs of the goat gene have not been systematically sorted and analyzed from the reported studies, which leads to an inability to find effective loci that could be applied in improving the prolificacy of goats via the molecular breeding method. In this study, we gathered and sorted 45 SNPs of the goat gene from all relevant studies and the National Center for Biotechnology Information Search database (NCBI), and especially analyzed and discussed the relationship between part controversial and potentially effective SNPs and the reproductive traits. The results indicated that non-synonymous SNPs A240V, Q320P, and V397I and synonymous SNPs L61L, N121N, and L141L were six “true” positive SNPs in improving goat fertility. Nevertheless, the regulation pathways and the specific mechanism of these six SNPs on goat fecundity are not clear, which still need further study in more goat breeds and a large sample size. These results provided an effective tool for follow-up research studies on the molecular genetic breeding of goats’ reproductive traits.