Acta Veterinaria et Zootechnica Sinica ›› 2020, Vol. 51 ›› Issue (4): 679-687.doi: 10.11843/j.issn.0366-6964.2020.04.004

• ANIMAL GENETICS AND BREEDING • Previous Articles     Next Articles

Tissue Expression Pattern and Functional SNP Analysis of INSL3 Gene in Sheep

PAN Zhangyuan1,2, ZHANG Zijie1, JI Jiuxiu1, LI Huazhen2, SUN Anfang1, LI Fukuan1, WANG Hui1, CHU Mingxing2*, Lü Shenjin1*   

  1. 1. College of Agriculture and Forestry Science, Linyi University, Linyi 276005, China;
    2. Key Laboratory of Animal Genetics, Breeding and Reproduction of Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Affairs, Institute of Animal Science, Chinese Academy of Agricultural Sciences, Beijing 100193, China
  • Received:2019-10-18 Online:2020-04-25 Published:2020-04-21

Abstract: The aim of this study was to analyze the tissue expression pattern and functional SNP of INSL3 gene in sheep. In this study, three each of male and female 1-year-old Small Tail Han sheep with healthy body condition and normal horn were used to detect tissue expression pattern of INSL3 by RT-PCR and real-time PCR. The gene resequencing data of 10 sheep breeds were used to explore the principal component analysis (PCA) and SNP of INSL3 gene region. The qPCR result showed that the expression level of INSL3 gene was the highest in ovary and testis, and INSL3 gene was also expressed in soft horn. The expression of INSL3 gene in testis was significantly higher than that in ovary (P<0.01), and the expression of INSL3 gene in soft horn of ram was significantly higher than that in ewe (P<0.05). PCA results showed that the INSL3 gene region was clustered according to the presence or absence of horn in a certain extent, which further indicated that this region might be related to horn. Functional site analysis revealed that 4 potential SNP sites were significantly different in distribution in horned and hornless populations. SNP1 was at the transcription factor binding site of KDM1A, SNP3 at the ESR1 binding site, and SNP6 at the terminator region. A missense mutation and a synonymous mutation were also found. This study shows that INSL3 gene may be related to the different horn size between male and female sheep as well as presence or absence of the horn, and multiple potential functional sites have been found. This study provides the basis for the future research on the functional mechanism of INSL3.

Key words: INSL3, real-time PCR, tissue expression pattern, functional SNP, sheep

CLC Number: