AUTHOR=Lyu Ding , Yu Yang , Wang Quanchao , Luo Zheng , Zhang Qian , Zhang Xiaojun , Xiang Jianhai , Li Fuhua 

TITLE=Identification of Growth-Associated Genes by Genome-Wide Association Study and Their Potential Application in the Breeding of Pacific White Shrimp (Litopenaeus vannamei)

JOURNAL=Frontiers in Genetics

VOLUME=12

YEAR=2021

URL=https://www.frontiersin.org/journals/genetics/articles/10.3389/fgene.2021.611570

DOI=10.3389/fgene.2021.611570

ISSN=1664-8021

ABSTRACT=<p>The Pacific white shrimp (<italic>Litopenaeus vannamei</italic>) is the most widely cultured shrimp in the world. A great attention has been paid to improve its body weight (BW) at harvest through genetic selection for decades. Genome-wide association study (GWAS) is a tool to dissect the genetic basis of the traits. In this study, a GWAS approach was conducted to find genes related to BW through genotyping 94,113 single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) in 200 individuals from a breeding population. Four BW-related SNPs located in LG19 and LG39 were identified. Through further candidate gene association analysis, the SNPs in two candidate genes, <italic>deoxycytidylate deaminase</italic> and <italic>non-receptor protein tyrosine kinase</italic>, were found to be related with the body weight of the shrimp. Marker-assisted best linear unbiased prediction (MA-BLUP) based on the SNPs in these two genes was used to estimate the breeding values, and the result showed that the highest prediction accuracy of MA-BLUP was increased by 9.4% than traditional BLUP. These results will provide useful information for the marker-assisted breeding in <italic>L. vannamei.</italic></p>