Identification of selection footprints in a brown Hanwoo (Korean cattle) population for production traits

Abstract

Korean cattle (Hanwoo) are categorized into three types of breeds according to their color, brown, brindle and black. Among the three breeds, the brown Hanwoo has been subjected to intensive artificial selection over the past seventy years to improve meat production traits such as carcass weight and marbling. In this study, Rsb method was applied to identify recent selection signals for production traits in brown Hanwoo. To identify traces driven by the artificial selection process within the Hanwoo breeding program, we used 3 types (breeds) of Hanwoo (brown Hanwoo; HW, brindle Hanwoo; BR, and Jeju black Hanwoo; JB) and Chinese Yanbian cattle (YB). The HW population was under selection pressure in the Hanwoo breeding program whilst BR, JB, and YB were unselected. We investigated each of the four comparisons (HW/BR, HW/JB, HW/YB cattle and HW/all three breeds; UN). As a result, we obtained 41, 38, 105, 87 possible candidate regions by the four comparisons, respectively. Finally, we identified 31 candidate regions that seem to be recently artificially selected in brown Hanwoo compared to other breeds. Moreover, 18 significant SNPs were detected in all four comparisons, 16 genes were located in near the significant the SNPs such as CAPN1, POMC or ADRB2.