The effect of polymorphism in the FADS2 gene on the fatty acid composition of bovine milk

Witold Stanisław Proskura; Michał Liput; Daniel Zaborski; Zbigniew Sobek; Yu-Hsiang Yu; Yeong-Hsiang Cheng; Andrzej Dybus

doi:10.5194/aab-62-547-2019

The effect of polymorphism in the FADS2 gene on the fatty acid composition of bovine milk

Arch Anim Breed. 2019 Sep 18;62(2):547-555. doi: 10.5194/aab-62-547-2019. eCollection 2019.

Authors

Witold Stanisław Proskura¹, Michał Liput¹, Daniel Zaborski², Zbigniew Sobek³, Yu-Hsiang Yu⁴, Yeong-Hsiang Cheng⁴, Andrzej Dybus¹

Affiliations

¹ Laboratory of Molecular Cytogenetics, Department of Ruminants Science, West Pomeranian University of Technology, Szczecin 71-270, Poland.
² Laboratory of Biostatistics, Department of Ruminants Science, West Pomeranian University of Technology, Szczecin 71-270, Poland.
³ Department of Genetics and Animal Breeding, Poznań University of Life Sciences, Poznań 60-637, Poland.
⁴ Department of Biotechnology and Animal Science, National Ilan University, I-Lan 260, Taiwan.

Abstract

Polyunsaturated fatty acids (PUFAs) play a role in a wide variety of physiological processes. They are produced by a series of desaturation and elongation reactions. $Δ$ -6-desaturase is a membrane-bound enzyme that catalyzes the conversion of $α$ -linolenic acid (C18:3 $n$ -3) and linoleic acid (C18:2 $n$ -6) to stearidonic acid (18:4 $n$ -3) and $γ$ -linolenic acid (18:3 $n$ -6). It is encoded by the FADS2 gene located on bovine chromosome 29. The aim of this study was to identify a single nucleotide polymorphism in the FADS2 gene and to determine possible associations with milk fatty acid composition in two breeds of dairy cattle, i.e., Jersey and Polish Holstein-Friesian. Direct DNA sequencing revealed the presence of an A-to-G substitution in intron 3 of the FADS2 gene (rs209202414). Both populations were genotyped with an appropriate PCR-RFLP assay. The following genotype distributions were observed: for Jerseys, AA $=$ 0.24, AG $=$ 0.63, and GG $=$ 0.13; for Polish Holstein-Friesians, AA $=$ 0.17, AG $=$ 0.40, and GG $=$ 0.43. In Jerseys, statistically significant relationships were found between the FASD2 genotypes and the following milk fatty acids: lauric ( $P = 0.0486$ ), behenic ( $P = 0.0199$ ), lignoceric ( $P = 0.0209$ ), oleic ( $P = 0.0386$ ), eicosatrienoic ( $P = 0.0113$ ), and docosadienoic ( $P = 0.0181$ ). In Polish Holstein-Friesian cows, significant associations were observed for erucic ( $P = 0.0460$ ) and docosahexaenoic ( $P = 0.0469$ ) acids. The study indicated the A-to-G substitution (rs209202414) in the bovine FADS2 gene as a potential genetic marker for fatty acid composition in cattle milk.