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An imprinted QTL with major effect on muscle mass and fat deposition maps to the IGF2 locus in pigs

Nature Genetics volume 21, pages 155–156 (1999)Cite this article

We have generated an intercross between Large White and Piétrain pig strains yielding 1,032 F2 offspring as described1. The Large White and Piétrain parental breeds differ in a number of economically important phenotypes. Piétrains are known for exceptional muscularity and leanness, whereas Large Whites show superior growth performance. We recorded 21 distinct phenotypes1 measuring growth performance (5), body proportions (1), muscularity (5), fat deposition (6) and meat quality (4) on all F2 offspring.

IGF2 therefore appeared to be a positional candidate for the observed QTL effect. In man and mouse, IGF2 is imprinted and expressed exclusively from the paternal allele in several tissues8. We analysed skeletal muscle and liver cDNA from 10-week-old porcine fetuses heterozygous for the G→A transition and SWC9 and showed that IGF2 is imprinted in these tissues in the pig as well (Fig. 2). If IGF2 is responsible for the observed effect and only the paternal IGF2 allele is expressed, one can predict that: (i) the paternal allele transmitted by F1 boars (P or LW) will affect the phenotype of F2 offspring; (ii) the maternal allele transmitted by F1 sows (P or LW) has no effect on the phenotype of F2 offspring; and (iii) the likelihood of the data would be superior under a model of a bimodal (1:1) F2 population sorted by inherited paternal allele when compared with a conventional mendelian model of a trimodal (1:2:1) F2 population. We adapted our QTL mapping programs (C.N. et al. ; unpublished data)to test the corresponding hypotheses. H0 was defined as the null hypothesis of no QTL, H1 as testing for the presence of a mendelian QTL, H2 as testing for the presence of a paternally expressed QTL and H3 as testing for the presence of a maternally expressed QTL. Lod score curves corresponding with log10 (H2/H0) and log 10 (H3/H0) are shown (Fig. 1b,c, respectively). We obtained significant lod scores when testing for the presence of a paternally expressed QTL, whereas there was no evidence for maternal transmission. The log10 (H2/H1) measured at the IGF2 position (Fig. 1d) shows that the hypothesis of a paternally expressed QTL is significantly more likely than the hypothesis of a mendelian QTL for all examined traits (2.6<log10 (H2/H1)<5.9).

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Figure 1: Lod score curves obtained in a Piétrain×Large White intercross for six phenotypes measuring muscle mass and fat deposition on pig chromosome 2.
Figure 2: Structure and expression of porcine IGF2.

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Acknowledgements

We thank V. Verleyen, S. Scalais, L. Grobet, C. Schirvel and C. Dasnois for their help in collecting and organizing the biological samples and phenotypic data; M. Rothschild for providing us with primer pairs for microsatellite amplification; Seghers Hybrid for their support and interest in this work; and L. Andersson for fruitful discussions. This work was supported by the Belgian Ministère des Classes Moyennes et de l'Agriculture.

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  1. Department of Genetics, Faculty of Veterinary Medicine, University of Liège (B43), 20 Bd de Colonster, 4000, Liège, Belgium

    Carine Nezer, Laurence Moreau, Benoît Brouwers, Wouter Coppieters, Johann Detilleux, Roger Hanset, Latifa Karim, Alex Kvasz, Pascal Leroy & Michel Georges

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  1. Carine Nezer
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Correspondence to Michel Georges.

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Nezer, C., Moreau, L., Brouwers, B. et al. An imprinted QTL with major effect on muscle mass and fat deposition maps to the IGF2 locus in pigs. Nat Genet 21, 155–156 (1999). https://doi.org/10.1038/5935

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