Genome and chromosome wide association studies for growth traits in Simmental and Simbrah cattle

OBJECTIVE: The objective of this study was to perform genome (genome wide association studies [GWAS]) and chromosome (CWAS) wide association analyses to identify single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) associated with growth traits in registered Simmental and Simbrah cattle. METHODS: The phenotypes were deregressed BLUP EBVs for birth weight, weaning weight direct, weaning weight maternal, and yearling weight. The genotyping was performed with the GGP Bovine 150k chip. After the quality control analysis, 105,129 autosomal SNP from 967 animals (473 Simmental and 494 Simbrah) were used to carry out genotype association tests. The two association analyses were performed per breed and using combined information of the two breeds. The SNP associated with growth traits were mapped to their corresponding genes at 100 kb on either side. RESULTS: A difference in magnitude of posterior probabilities was found across breeds between genome and chromosome wide association analyses. A total of 110, 143, and 302 SNP were associated with GWAS and CWAS for growth traits in the Simmental-, Simbrah- and joint-data analyses, respectively. It stands out from the enrichment analysis of the pathways for RNA polymerase (POLR2G, POLR3E) and GABAergic synapse (GABRR1, GABRR3) for Simmental cattle and p53 signaling pathway (BID, SERPINB5) for Simbrah cattle. CONCLUSION: Only 6,265% of the markers associated with growth traits were found using CWAS and GWAS. The associated markers using the CWAS analysis, which were not associated using the GWAS, represents information that due to the model and priors was not associated with the traits.