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Evidence for parent-of-origin effects on genetic variability of beef traits

N. Neugebauer^*, I. Räder^*, H. J. Schild, D. Zimmer^* and N. Reinsch^*

^* Forschungsinstitut für die Biologie landwirtschaftlicher Nutztiere, FBN, Forschungsbereich Genetik und Biometrie, Wilhelm-Stahl-Allee 2, 18196 Dummerstorf, Germany LKV Bayern, Haydnstraße 11, 80336 München, Germany

Reinsch{at}fbn-dummerstorf.de

Abstract

Imprinted genes are involved in many aspects of development in mammals, plants and perhaps birds and may play a role in growth and carcass composition of slaughter animals. In the presence of genomic imprinting the expression and, consequently, the effect on the phenotype of maternal and paternal alleles is different. For genetic evaluation genomic imprinting can be accounted for by incorporating two additive genetic effects per animal, the first corresponds to a paternal and the second to a maternal expression pattern of imprinted genes. This model holds whatever the mode of imprinting may be: paternal or maternal, full or partial, or any combination thereof. A set of slaughter data from 65,233 German Simmental fattening bulls was analysed with respect to the relative importance of the genetic imprinting variance. Besides of slaughter weight, net daily gain and killing out percentage there were 22 other traits describing the carcass composition. The latter traits were evaluated by automatic video-imaging (VIA) devices and comprised weights of valuable cuts as well as fat- and meatiness grade. The number of ancestors in the pedigree was 356,880. Genomic imprinting significantly contributed to the genetic variance of ten traits, with estimated proportions between 8% and 25% of the total additive genetic variance. For six of these traits the maternal contribution to the imprinting variance was larger than the paternal while for all other traits the reverse was true. Fat grade only showed a paternal contribution to the imprinting variance. Estimates of animal model heritabilities of VIA-recorded carcass traits ranged between 20% and 30%.

Key Words: genomic imprinting • epigenetics • variance components • imprinting variance • carcass traits in cattle