Recent advances in understanding genetic variants associated with economically important traits in sheep (Ovis aries) revealed by high-throughput screening technologies

Abstract

Sheep are one of the most economically important domesticated animals for human society. However, genetic improvements for the key traits associated with meat, growth, milk, wool, reproduction, horns and tails progress slowly using conventional crossbreeding methods. With the development and utilization of high-throughput screening technologies over the last decade, a list of functional genes and genetic variants associated with these traits has been identified. This review covers recent genome-wide studies on sheep productive traits using high-throughput screening technologies, including those based on single-nucleotide polymorphisms and copy number variants at the whole-genome level (e.g., genome-wide association studies), transcriptome and DNA methylation sequences. Additionally, comprehensive information on functional genes and genetic variants associated with economically important traits in sheep is provided.

Keywords

sheep / high-throughput screening / productive traits / genome-wide studies

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Acknowledgements

This work was financially supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (31272413, 3161101336), the National Transgenic Breeding Project of China (2014ZX0800952B), the External Cooperation Program of Chinese Academy of Sciences (152111KYSB20150010) and the Taishan Scholars Program of Shandong Province (201511085).

Compliance with ethics guidelines

Song-Song Xu and Meng-Hua Li declare that they have no conflicts of interest or financial conflicts to disclose.

This article is a review and does not contain any studies with human or animal subjects performed by any of the authors.

RIGHTS & PERMISSIONS

The Author(s) 2017. Published by Higher Education Press. This is an open access article under the CC BY license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0)