Análise funcional de genes candidatos para características de interesse econômico em bovinos da raça Canchim

Abstract

It is known that the quality of a product is the fundamental factor so that it can be inserted in the market and the Brazilian beef sector has been concerned not only with the increase of production, but also with the quality of the meat produced. However, producers face some difficulties to obtain improvement of characteristics such as the amount of back fat and marbling, weight gain, besides the coat and the scrotal circumference. Several methodologies have been developed in order to obtain faster and more accurate results, such as the use of candidate genes and individual and adjacent analyzes of SNPs that control the manifestation of characteristics of economic interest, as well as studies aimed at elucidating the biological and metabolic architecture involved in the feature. In view of the above, the present study aims to perform a functional analysis of genes obtained from genomic regions previously identified by genome-wide association study (GWAS). A total of 36 genomic regions has been associated with back fat thickness (BFT), marbling (MARB), rib eye area (REA), yerling weight (YW), coat (COAT) and scrotal circumference (SC). The 220 genes were submitted to the functional annotation by the Database for Annotation, Visualization, and Integrated Discovery (DAVID) tool to verify their functionalities in the categories biological process, cellular component, molecular function and metabolic pathways, and 186 annotations were obtained. For the verification of the metabolic pathways, the Kyoto Encyclopedia of Genes and Genomes (KEGG) database was used. Later, the candidate genes were selected from the filtering of ontological terms and metabolic pathways related to adipose tissue, muscle tissue, cell development and proliferation, coat and scrotal pouch, obtained by the QuickGO and Integrative Visual Analysis Tool for Biological Networks and Pathways (Visant). Another selection criteria used for the selection of genes was the previous identification of the same ones in the literature. After this filtering, 29 genes were considered as potential candidates for the characteristics evaluated, beeing two genes for BFT, three for MARB, 15 for REA, six for YW, one for COAT and five for SC. The results obtained in this study can be helpfull for the selection of genetically superior animals in breeding programs of the Charbray breed.