Identifying functional genomic variants for cryptorchidism and scrotal hernia's in pigs

Congenital defects are a burden in pig production with scrotal hernia and cryptorchidism being the mayor ones. This project aims to contribute to a genetic selection method in two boar lines against the two major congenital defects in pigs, scrotal or inguinal hernia and cryptorchidism, based on knowledge of the genetic determinants of these defects. The starting hypothesis in defining these genetic determinants is that both SH and CO are under control of a limited number of genes (polygenic trait) maybe with incomplete penetrance. As sample size is a major hurdle in traditional genome wide association studies for complex traits, in the current project a different approach is followed. A backcross enrichment experiment is set up to obtain an optimal set of samples for genomic and transcriptomic analyses of affected and non-affected piglets for each of the defects. The integration of genomics (whole genome sequencing) and transcriptomics (RNA sequencing) will help to identify important functional variants involved in the 2 defects.

Keywords:genetic defect, scrotal hernia, cryptorchidism, pig, transcriptomics, genomics

Disciplines:Microbiology