Association of sequence variations in DGAT 1 gene with economic traits in hanwoo (Korea Cattle)

The effects of diacylglycerol O-acyltransferase (DGAT1) candidate gene polymorphism on the economic traits of Hanwoo were studied. Through sequencing analysis, two polymorphism sites at K232A and T11993C were established and were analyzed by PCR-RFLP. The PCR-RFLP analysis for K232A showed that the frequencies of alleles K and A were 0.75 and 0.25, respectively, and the frequencies of genotypes for K/K, K/A and A/A were estimated as 0.509, 0.491 and 0, respectively. In the PCR RFLP analysis for T11993C, we found allele frequencies of 0.773 and 0.227 for T and A, respectively, and 0.546, 0.454 and 0 for the T/T, T/C and C/C genotype frequencies, respectively. No significant effects on economic traits in Hanwoo were found in the separate analysis of K232A and T11993C polymorphisms, but the interaction between K232A and T11993C showed a significant effect (p<0.005) on marbling score. The DGAT1 candidate gene was found to have a significant effect not only on milk yield and component traits but also on the metabolism of intramuscular fat.