Polymorphisms of diacylglycerol acyltransferase 2 gene and their relationship with growth traits in goats.

Diacylglycerol acyltransferase (DGAT) plays a critical role in the synthesis of triacylglycerol. In this study, PCR-SSCP and DNA sequencing methods were employed to screen the genetic variations of DGAT-2 gene in 299 goats from three breeds (Boer goat, Chinese Xuhuai white goat and Chinese Haimen goat). Three fragments of DGAT-2 gene were investigated, only exon 3 of DGAT-2 gene showed polymorphism. The alignment between nucleotide sequences of NM_205793.2 in GenBank and the sequencing results of three PCR products with different patterns revealed that there was one mutation (A → G) in exon 3 of DGAT-2 gene, which resulted in amino acid change (Lys → Arg) and constructed two genotypes (AA, AB). The frequencies of allele A and genotype AA were dominant in all three breeds. And there was no significant difference for genotypic and allelic frequencies among the three breeds. The genotype distributions were in good agreement with Hardy-Weinberg equilibrium (P > 0.05) in each breed. Significant statistical differences were only found in withers heights (P < 0.05) in Xuhuai goat between genotypes. The results indicated that individuals with genotype AA were significantly higher than those of individuals with genotype AB in withers height (P < 0.05). No polymorphism was detected in the intron 3, exon 8 and 3' flanking region. So we suggested that DGAT-2 gene had the close relationship with growth traits in goats. And this mutation could be used as a perfect molecular marker for marker-assisted selection (MAS) in animal genetics and breeding.