Individual and population diversity of 20 representative olfactory receptor genes in pigs

Understanding the influence of genetic variations in olfactory receptor (OR) genes on the olfaction-influenced phenotypes such as behaviors, reproduction, and feeding is important in animal biology. However, our understanding of the complexity of the OR subgenome is limited. In this study, we analyzed 1120 typing results of 20 representative OR genes belonging to 13 OR families on 14 pig chromosomes from 56 individuals belonging to seven different breeds using a sequence-based OR typing method. We showed that the presence of copy number variations, conservation of locus-specific diversity, abundance of breed-specific alleles, presence of a loss-of-function allele, and low-level purifying selection in pig OR genes could be common characteristics of OR genes in mammals. The observed nucleotide sequence diversity of pig ORs was higher than that of dogs. To the best of our knowledge, this is the first report on the individual- or population-level characterization of a large number of OR family genes in livestock species.