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A paternally expressed QTL affecting skeletal and cardiac muscle mass in pigs maps to the IGF2 locus

Nature Genetics volume 21, pages 157–158 (1999)Cite this article

We performed QTL analyses with the revised chromosome 2 map using a statistical model2 testing for the presence of an imprinting effect as expected for IGF2. There was evidence for a paternally expressed QTL located at the distal tip of 2p (Fig. 1, Table 1). The QTL had large effects on lean meat content in ham and explained 30% of the residual phenotypic variance in the F2 population. Large effects on the area of the longissimus dorsi muscle, heart weight and backfat thickness (subcutaneous fat) were also noted, as well as a moderate effect on one meat quality trait, reflectance value. The QTL had no significant effect on abdominal fat, birth weight, or growth, or weight of liver, kidney or spleen. The Large White allele was associated with larger muscle mass and reduced backfat thickness, consistent with the difference between this breed and the Wild Boar population. The imprinting effect observed for all affected traits suggested a single causative locus. Clear paternal expression was illustrated by the least-squares means, which fell into two classes following the population origin of the paternally inherited allele (Table 1). A highly significant segregation distortion (excess of Wild Boar-derived alleles) was found in the IGF2 region (Table 1; χ2=11.7, d.f.=2; P=0.003). The deviation was observed with all three distal markers and thus was not due to typing errors. The segregation distortion did not show an imprinting effect, as frequencies of the two reciprocal types of heterozygotes were identical (Table 1).

Table 1 QTL analysis for pig chromosome 2 in a Wild Boar/Large White intercrossa
Full size table

The role of IGF2 in prenatal development is well documented6,7. We now demonstrate a role for the IGF2 region in postnatal development as well. Our approach is particularly powerful for the detection of QTLs with parent-of-origin-specific effects, as multiple alleles (or haplotypes) are segregating and we were able to deduce whether a heterozygous F2 animal received the Wild Boar allele from the F1 male or female. The segregation of an imprinted QTL may be overlooked in human studies or in intercrosses between inbred rodent populations due to experimental design or statistical treatment of data. Our results have bearings on future analyses of association between genetic polymorphism in the insulin-IGF2 region, multifactorial traits and diseases in humans8,9, inbred rodent models and meat-producing farm animals.

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Figure 1: Test statistic curves obtained in QTL analyses of chromosome 2 in a Wild Boar/Large White intercross.

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Acknowledgements

We thank M. Georges, H. Luthman and R. Ohlsson for valuable discussions; U. Gustafsson for technical assistance; and the US national genome program NSRP-8 for providing microsatellite primers. This work was supported by SJFR and the Food21 project (MISTRA). The National Supercomputer Centre (NSC, Linköping University) provided computer resources for the QTL analysis.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Animal Breeding and Genetics, Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences, Uppsala Biomedical Center, Box 597, Uppsala, S–751 24, Sweden

    Jin-Tae Jeon, Örjan Carlborg, Anna Törnsten, Elisabetta Giuffra, Valerie Amarger, Lena Andersson-Eklund, Kjell Andersson & Leif Andersson

  2. Institut National de la Recherche Agronomique, LMRA–INRA–CEA , Jouy–en–Josas, 78352, France

    Patrick Chardon

  3. Department of Food Science, Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences, Uppsala, S–750 07, Sweden

    Ingemar Hansson & Kerstin Lundström

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Jeon, JT., Carlborg, Ö., Törnsten, A. et al. A paternally expressed QTL affecting skeletal and cardiac muscle mass in pigs maps to the IGF2 locus. Nat Genet 21, 157–158 (1999). https://doi.org/10.1038/5938

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