Associations between gene polymorphisms in two crucial metabolic pathways and growth traits in pigs

Propanoate metabolism and fatty acid metabolism are crucial metabolic pathways in vivo that have been studied extensively and have shown a significant influence on the growth and diseases of animals. In order to identify the essential genes significantly associated with porcine growth traits at the pathway level, we selected 14 candidate genes with 58 SNPs, including 24 tag SNPs and 34 predicted SNPs, in the two essential pathways to test using the SNaPshot mini-sequencing method. Association analysis was performed using both static and dynamic phenotypic records. The results showed that four SNPs, respectively in SUCLA2, SUCLG2, ACADS, and ALDH1B1, were significantly associated with growth in pigs. In addition, an exciting finding was that the change of transcription factor binding site that resulted from alteration of the bases in SUCLG2 brought out a transcription factor binding site for POU1F1a, which is the product of a notable marker gene for growth of animals.