Epistatic interactions on chromosome 14 influencing stillbirth in Fleckvieh cattle

Abstract

Single nucleotide polymorphism (SNP) data of 7384 Fleckvieh bulls was analyzed to identify epistatic interactions influencing stillbirth. Deregressed breeding values were used as phenotypes. The epistatic effects were identified as significant interaction terms from pairwise linear regressions performed for each SNP after accounting for multiple testing. Majority of the detected epistatic effects were located in the 9-31Mb region of chromosome 14, corresponding to the most significant region from the genome wide association. Additional epistatic SNPs at 50.5Mb and 80.5 Mb at the same chromosome were detected. The region around 25 Mb contained genes connected to height and body size such as PLAG1, CHCHD7, LYN, RDHE2 (SDR16C5) and PENK. The other interesting region at 50.5Mb contained the TRPS1 gene influencing bone malformations. Both regions have been identified as candidates influencing stillbirth.