Abstract:

This experiment was conducted to reveal the polymorphism of exon 3 of ADAMTS1 gene which was differentially expressed between Mongolian sheep (MS) ovaries, and to analyze the different expression in single-bearing and biparous MS ovaries and uterus tissue. The polymorphism of ADAMTS1 gene in exon 3 was detected by polymerase chain reaction-single strand conformation polymorphism (PCR-SSCP) and direct DNA sequencing technique, and differential expression in single-bearing and biparous MS ovaries and uterus tissue was detected by real-time quantitative PCR (RQ-PCR). The result showed that the ADAMTS1 gene had a C→T point mutation for the base 141 in exon 3 coding region, but not caused the amino acid sequence changes. The results of χ² fitness test indicated that all the MS populations in low polymorphism (PIC=0.233) and not in Hardy-Weinberg equilibrium (P<0.05). The expression of ADAMTS1 gene in biparous MS ovaries and uterus tissue was 2.04 and 2.30-fold that of single-bearing MS by using RQ-PCR. The results indicated that ADAMTS1 gene was the major gene and played an important role to the MS fecundity traits.