A whole genome association study to detect additive and dominant single nucleotide polymorphisms for growth and carcass traits in Korean native cattle, Hanwoo

OBJECTIVE: A whole genome association study was conducted to identify single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) with additive and dominant effects for growth and carcass traits in Korean native cattle, Hanwoo. METHODS: The data set comprised 61 sires and their 486 Hanwoo steers that were born between spring of 2005 and fall of 2007. The steers were genotyped with the 35,968 SNPs that were embedded in the Illumina bovine SNP 50K beadchip and six growth and carcass quality traits were measured for the steers. A series of lack-of-fit tests between the models was applied to classify gene expression pattern as additive or dominant. RESULTS: chromosomes (i.e. BTA 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 9, 11, 12, 13, 14, 16, 17, 18, 20, 23, 26, 28, and 29) were detected. There is strong evidence that BTA14 is the key chromosome affecting CWT. Also, BTA20 is the key chromosome for almost all traits measured (WWT, YWT, LMA). CONCLUSION: The application of various additive and dominance SNP models enabled better characterization of SNP inheritance mode for growth and carcass quality traits in Hanwoo, and many of the detected SNPs or QTL had dominance effects, suggesting that dominance be considered for the whole-genome SNPs data and implementation of successive molecular breeding schemes in Hanwoo.