ARS | Publication request: Genome-Wide SNP Association Analysis for Loci Conferring Marek's Disease

Submitted to: International Conference on Animal Genetics
Publication Type: Abstract Only
Publication Acceptance Date: April 30, 2010
Publication Date: July 26, 2010
Citation: Chang, S., Dunn, J.R., Heidari, M., Mitra, A., Song, J., Zhang, H. 2010. Genome-wide SNP association analysis for loci conferring Marek's disease [abstract]. In: 32nd Conference of the International Society for Animal Genetics Program and Abstract Book, July 26-30, 2010, Edinburgh, Scotland. Page No. 5088.

Technical Abstract: Marek’s disease (MD) is a T cell lymphoma of domestic chickens caused by Marek’s disease virus (MDV), a highly oncogenic and contagious cell-associated alpha-herpesvirus. Since the 1970s, MD has been controlled by vaccination. However, due to continuous viral evolution with increasing virulence, and dominant susceptibility to MD in large numbers of commercial chicken flocks, MD remains as a highly potential threat to the poultry industry worldwide. The host susceptibility and resistance to MD are controlled by genomic variation. QTLs conferring MD have been reportedly identified on GGA 1, 2, 4, 7, 8, 12, and 17. This study explored a panel of 57,636 SNPs to identify loci conferring MD in a F2 population derived from two highly inbred experimental lines of chickens, highly resistant or susceptible to MD. A total of 2,610 SNPs were determined being informative among the F2 chickens challenged with a very virulent plus (vv+) strain of MDV. We detected significant association between MD and 172 SNPs distributed on chromosomes 1, 3, 15, and Z by Marker-Trait Association analysis with a generalized linear mixed model using SAS GLIMMIX procedure for binary trait analysis while taking into account of the pedigree structures (p values ranged from 0.049 to 0.000089). Whilst the results are in good agreement with reported QTLs on chromosome 1, the SNPs identified on chromosomes 3 (22 SNPs), 15 (20 SNPs), and Z (65 SNPs) present new possibility of loci or QTLs conferring MD and deserve further confirmation in other populations.