Relationship Between Combined Genotypes of UCP Gene and Growth Traits in Chickens

The uncoupling protein （UCP） is a member of the mitochondrial membrane transporter family, which plays an important role in energy metabolism. In the present study, the UCP gene was considered as a candidate gene for chicken growth traits, and the association of UCP gene SNPs with growth rate was investigated in the eighth generation of NEAUHLF broiler lines. Two SNPs were found in chicken UCP gene, and the association analysis results showed that both the individual and combination of chicken UCPgene SNPs were significantly associated with body weight of 7 weeks （BW7） and carcass weight （CW） （P〈0.05）, and the combination had much significant effects than the single SNP. This research suggested that the UCP gene could be a candidate gene or linked to a major gene which affected growth traits in chicken

Analysis of the Genetic Effects of Three Genes Involved in de novo Purine Biosynthesis on IMP Content in Baier Chickens

GPAT,AIRC and purH genes are involved in the de novo purine biosynthesis,and they all had significant effects on muscle inosine monophosphate(IMP) content in chickens.This study was designed to investigate the effects of GPAT,AIRC and purH genes on muscle IMP content in a relatively large population of Baier chickens;single genotype effects as well as the combined genotype effects were analyzed.The results further support that GPAT,AIRC and purH genes had effects on muscle IMP content;they might be candidate loci or linked to major genes affecting muscle IMP content.The combined genotypic effects were significantly higher than those of the single genotypes and were even larger when more gene loci were combined.We tentatively conclude that combined genotypes are superior to single genotypes as potential molecular markers for meat quality traits in chicken.

Multi-locus association study of schizophrenia susceptibility genes with a posterior probability method

Schizophrenia is a serious neuropsychiatric illness affecting about 1% of the world’s population. It is considered a complex inheritance disorder. A number of genes are involved in combination in the etiology of the disorder. Evidence implicates the altered dopaminergic trans- mission in schizophrenia. In the present study, in order to identify susceptibility genes for schizophrenia in dopaminergic metabolism, we analyzed 59 single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) in 24 genes of the dopaminergic pathway among 82 unrelated patients with schizophre- nia and 108 matched normal controls. Considering that traditional single-locus association stud- ies ignore the multigenic nature of complex diseases and do not take into account possible in- teractions between susceptibility genes, we proposed a multi-locus analysis method, using the posterior probability of morbidity as a measure of absolute disease risk for a multi-locus genotype combination, and developed an algorithm based on perturbation and average to detect the sus- ceptibility multi-locus genotype combinations, as well as to repress noise and avoid false positive results at our best. A three-locus SNP genotype combination involved in the interactions of COMT and ALDH3B1 genes was detected to be significantly susceptible to schizophrenia.