Reaffirmation of known major genes and the identification of novel candidate genes associated with carcass-related metrics based on whole genome sequence within a large multi-breed cattle population

Although plausible novel candidate genes were identified, the proportion of variance explained by these candidates was minimal thus reaffirming that while carcass performance may be affected by major genes in the form of MSTN and NCAPG/LCORL, the majority of variance is attributed to the additive (and possibly multiplicative) effect of many polymorphisms of small effect.