A Functional Variant Alters the Binding of Bone morphogenetic protein 2 to the Transcription Factor NF-κB to Regulate Bone morphogenetic protein 2 Gene Expression and Chicken Abdominal Fat Deposition

Meng Yuan; Xin Liu; Mengdie Wang; Ziwei Li; Hui Li; Li Leng; Shouzhi Wang

doi:10.3390/ani13213401

A Functional Variant Alters the Binding of Bone morphogenetic protein 2 to the Transcription Factor NF-κB to Regulate Bone morphogenetic protein 2 Gene Expression and Chicken Abdominal Fat Deposition

Animals (Basel). 2023 Nov 2;13(21):3401. doi: 10.3390/ani13213401.

Authors

Meng Yuan^{1

2

3}, Xin Liu^{1

2

3}, Mengdie Wang^{1

2

3}, Ziwei Li^{1

2

3}, Hui Li^{1

2

3}, Li Leng^{1

2

3}, Shouzhi Wang^{1

2

3}

Affiliations

¹ Key Laboratory of Chicken Genetics and Breeding, Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Affairs, Harbin 150030, China.
² Key Laboratory of Animal Genetics, Breeding and Reproduction, Education Department of Heilongjiang Province, Harbin 150030, China.
³ College of Animal Science and Technology, Northeast Agricultural University, Harbin 150030, China.

Abstract

In this study, we employed a dual-luciferase reporter assay and electrophoretic mobility shift analysis (EMSA) in vitro to explore whether a 12-base pair (bp) insertion/deletion (InDel) variant (namely g.14798187_14798188insTCCCTGCCCCCT) within intron 2 of the chicken BMP2 gene, which was significantly associated with chicken abdominal fat weight and abdominal fat percentage, is a functional marker and its potential regulatory mechanism. The reporter analysis demonstrated that the luciferase activity of the deletion allele was extremely significantly higher than that of the insertion allele (p < 0.01). A bioinformatics analysis revealed that compared to the deletion allele, the insertion allele created a transcription factor binding site of nuclear factor-kappa B (NF-κB), which exhibited an inhibitory effect on fat deposition. A dual-luciferase reporter assay demonstrated that the inhibitory effect of NF-κB on the deletion allele was stronger than that on the insertion allele. EMSA indicated that the binding affinity of NF-κB for the insertion allele was stronger than that for the deletion allele. In conclusion, the 12-bp InDel chicken BMP2 gene variant is a functional variant affecting fat deposition in chickens, which may partially regulate BMP2 gene expression by affecting the binding of transcription factor NF-κB to the BMP2 gene.

Keywords: Bone morphogenetic protein 2 (BMP2); chicken; functional variation; transcriptional regulation.

Abstract

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