About this Research Topic

Background

Livestock are a crucial component of agriculture, providing essential sources of meat, eggs, milk, fur, and other products for humans. Elucidating the genetic and epigenetic mechanisms underlying these agronomic traits is a vibrant research area. With the advancement of high-throughput sequencing technology, numerous genes and genetic variations associated with agronomic traits have been identified through selection signature analysis, genome-wide association studies (GWAS), and RNA-Seq. However, most candidate variation sites associated with important economic traits are located in the noncoding regions and exhibit high linkage disequilibrium, making it challenging to identify major genes and causal variations.

The implementation of the Functional Annotation of Animal Genomes consortium (FAANG) and Farm animal GTEx (FarmGTEx) has propelled the use of multi-omics sequencing technologies, such as ATAC-Seq, WGBS, CUT&Tag, and Hi-C, to screen for candidate genes and causative variants related to important economic traits in livestock. Furthermore, integrating GWAS, transcriptomics, and epigenome data contributes to more efficiently identifying causal genes and variants, thereby accelerating the process of molecular breeding based on molecular markers associated with functional genes.

This topic welcomes research on the epigenetics and multi-omics studies of important traits in livestock. Original research articles can cover, but are not limited to, the following areas:
1. Identification of gene functions and variants for agronomic traits in livestock;
2. Epigenetic regulation elements related to agronomic traits in livestock;
3. Epigenetic regulation (Open chromatin areas, histone modification, DNA methylation, 3D genomics, etc.);
4. Integrated analysis of multi-omics data (GWAS, RNA-Seq, ATAC-Seq, CUT&Tag, etc.).

Article types and fees

This Research Topic accepts the following article types, unless otherwise specified in the Research Topic description:

• Brief Research Report
• Data Report
• Editorial
• General Commentary
• Hypothesis and Theory
• Methods
• Mini Review
• Opinion
• Original Research
• ... View all formats

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Article types

This Research Topic accepts the following article types, unless otherwise specified in the Research Topic description:

• Brief Research Report
• Data Report
• Editorial
• General Commentary
• Hypothesis and Theory
• Methods
• Mini Review
• Opinion
• Original Research
• Perspective
• Policy and Practice Reviews
• Review
• Systematic Review
• Technology and Code

Keywords: Economic Trait, Genetics Marker, Functional Genomics, Regulation elements, Molecular Breeding, Multi-omics

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