Estimation of linkage disequilibrium and analysis of genetic diversity in Korean chicken lines

PLoS One. 2018 Feb 9;13(2):e0192063. doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0192063. eCollection 2018.

Abstract

The development of genetic markers for animal breeding is an effective strategy to reduce the time and cost required to improve economically important traits. To implement genomic selection in the multibreed chicken population of Korea, an understanding of the linkage disequilibrium (LD) status of the target population is essential. In this study, we performed population genetic analyses to investigate LD decay, the effective population size, and breed diversity using 600K high-density single nucleotide polymorphism genotypes of 189 native chickens in 14 lines (including Korean native chicken, imported and adapted purebred and commercial chickens). The results indicated that commercial native chickens have less calculated LD (average, r2 = 0.13-0.26) and purebred native chickens have more calculated LD (average, r2 = 0.24-0.37) across the entire genome. The effective population sizes of the examined lines showed patterns opposite to those of population LD. The phylogeny and admixture analyses showed that commercial and purebred chickens were well distinguished, except for Rhode Island Red (RIR) purebred lines of NC (NIAS_RIR_C) and ND (NIAS_RIR_D). These lines are difficult to distinguish clearly because they originated from the same respective breeds. The results of this study may provide important information for the development of genetic markers that can be used in breeding to improve the economic traits of native chickens.

Publication types

  • Research Support, Non-U.S. Gov't

MeSH terms

  • Animals
  • Chickens / genetics*
  • Genetic Variation*
  • Linkage Disequilibrium*
  • Polymorphism, Single Nucleotide
  • Republic of Korea

Grants and funding

This work was supported by Korea Institute of Planning and Evaluation for Technology in Food, Agriculture, Forestry and Fisheries (IPET) through Golden Seed Project, Ministry of Agriculture, Food and Rural Affairs (MAFRA) (213010-05-1-SB250) and "Cooperative Research Program for Agriculture Science & Technology Development (Project No. PJ012820052017)", Rural Development Administration, Republic of Korea, and thanks to Hanhyup commercial native chicken company which provided chicken resources and background information.