muscle-related traits in cattle the role of the myostatin gene in the south devon breed肌肉品质的牛肌肉生长抑制素基因的作用在南德文郡品种.pdfVIP

Genet. Sel. Evol. 34 (2002) 221–232 221 © INRA, EDP Sciences, 2002 DOI: 10.1051/gse:2002005 Original article Muscle-related traits in cattle: The role of the myostatin gene in the South Devon breed Pamela WIENER∗, Judith Alexis SMITH∗∗, Alyson Margaret LEWIS∗∗∗, John Arthur WOOLLIAMS, John Lewis WILLIAMS Roslin Institute, Roslin, Midlothian, EH25 9PS, UK (Received 22 February 2001; accepted 19 October 2001) Abstract – In this paper, we examined the effects of an 11-bp mutation within the GDF-8 gene, originally identified in Belgian Blue cattle, in the South Devon breed. The mutation was found at moderate frequency (0.37) in the South Devon population. We quantified the effects of this mutation on growth, body composition and calving traits in South Devon cattle. We found that the mutation significantly increased muscle score and calving difficulty and decreased fat depth. The mutation did not significantly affect weight at 200 and 400 days or muscle depth. Its effect on muscle score and fat depth was additive while its effect on calving difficulty was recessive. The mutation accounted for a significant proportion of the phenotypic variance in muscle score and calving difficulty. There was an economic benefit of the mutation for this data set, however, calculations were sensitive to changes in the parameter values. Additional data would be required to refine these calculations. GDF-8 / myostatin / South Devon cattle / double muscling / muscle hypertrophy 1. INTRODUCTION Identification of the myostatin gene (GDF-8) has been one of the most important findings in cattle genetics of the last decade since it represents the first gene to have been identified with a large