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ORIGINAL RESEARCH article

Front. Genet.
Sec. Livestock Genomics
Volume 15 - 2024 | doi: 10.3389/fgene.2024.1526473

Transgenerational epigenetic heritability for growth, body composition, and reproductive traits in Landrace pigs

Provisionally accepted
Andre Campelo Araujo Andre Campelo Araujo 1Jay S Johnson Jay S Johnson 2Jason R Graham Jason R Graham 1Jeremy Howard Jeremy Howard 3Yijian Huang Yijian Huang 3Hinayah Rojas De Oliveira Hinayah Rojas De Oliveira 1Luiz Brito Luiz Brito 1*
  • 1 Purdue University, West Lafayette, Indiana, United States
  • 2 Agricultural Research Service, United States Department of Agriculture, Washington D.C., District of Columbia, United States
  • 3 Smithfield Premium Genetics, Rose Hill, United States

The final, formatted version of the article will be published soon.

    Epigenetics is an important source of variation in complex traits that is not due to changes in DNA sequences and is dependent on the environment the individuals are exposed to. Therefore, we aimed to estimate transgenerational epigenetic heritability, percentage of resetting epigenetic marks, genetic parameters, and predicting breeding values using genetic and epigenetic models for growth, body composition, and reproductive traits in Landrace pigs using routinely recorded datasets. Birth and weaning weight, backfat thickness, total number of piglets born, and number of piglets born alive (BW, WW, BF, TNB, and NBA, respectively) were investigated. Models including epigenetic effects had a similar or better fit than solely genetic models. Including genomic information in epigenetic models resulted in large changes in the variance component estimates. Transgenerational epigenetic heritability estimates ranged between 0.042 (NBA) to 0.336 (BF). The reset coefficient estimates for epigenetic marks were between 80 and 90%. Heritability estimates for the direct additive and maternal genetic effects ranged between 0.040 (BW) to 0.502 (BF) and 0.034 (BF) to 0.134 (BW), respectively. Repeatability of the reproductive traits ranged between 0.098 (NBA) to 0.148 (TNB). Prediction accuracies, bias, and dispersion ranged between 0.199 (BW) to 0.443 (BF), -0.080 (WW) to 0.034 (NBA), and -0.134 (WW) to 0.131 (TNB), respectively, with no substantial differences between genetic and epigenetic models. Transgenerational epigenetic heritability estimates are moderate for growth and body composition and low for reproductive traits in North American Landrace pigs. Fitting epigenetic effects in genetic models did not impact the prediction of breeding values.

    Keywords: ebv, epigenetics, Genetic parameters, Genomics, Swine, variance components

    Received: 11 Nov 2024; Accepted: 24 Dec 2024.

    Copyright: © 2024 Araujo, Johnson, Graham, Howard, Huang, Rojas De Oliveira and Brito. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.

    * Correspondence: Luiz Brito, Purdue University, West Lafayette, 47907, Indiana, United States

    Disclaimer: All claims expressed in this article are solely those of the authors and do not necessarily represent those of their affiliated organizations, or those of the publisher, the editors and the reviewers. Any product that may be evaluated in this article or claim that may be made by its manufacturer is not guaranteed or endorsed by the publisher.