Identification of Recently Selected Mutations Driven by Artificial Selection in Hanwoo (Korean Cattle)

Abstract

Hanwoo have been subjected over the last seventy years to intensive artificial selection with the aim of improving meat production traits such as marbling and carcass weight. In this study, we performed a signature of selection analysis to identify recent positive selected regions driven by a long-term artificial selection process called a breeding program using whole genome SNP data. In order to investigate homozygous regions across the genome, we estimated iES (integrated Extended Haplotype Homozygosity SNP) for the each SNPs. As a result, we identified two highly homozygous regions that seem to be strong and/or recent positive selection. Five genes (DPH5, OLFM3, S1PR1, LRRN1 and CRBN) were included in this region. To go further in the interpretation of the observed signatures of selection, we subsequently concentrated on the annotation of differentiated genes defined according to the iES value of SNPs localized close or within them. We also described the detection of the adaptive evolution at the molecular level for the genes of interest. As a result, this analysis also led to the identification of OLFM3 as having a strong signal of selection in bovine lineage. The results of this study indicate that artificial selection which might have targeted most of these genes was mainly oriented towards improvement of meat production.