GENOME-WIDE SEARCH POLYMORPHISMS USING ILLUMINA BEADCHIP IN RUSSIAN MEAT MERINO SHEEP FOR FUTURE GENOTYPING BY SEQUENCING

Abstract

For the mass use of genotyping by sequencing in sheep of the Russian Meat Merino breed, it is necessary to determine the loci of the genome with a sufficient frequency of occurrence in the population. To identify them, genotyping of Russian Meat Merino sheep was carried out using Ovine Infinium HD BeadChip 600K. As a result of polymorphism evaluation of 606,000 loci, 555 SNPs were selected with a frequency of occurrence of both homozygous variants in the range of 0.2850-0.3149. After excluding substitutions located closer than 1cM, a list of 387 polymorphisms was obtained. The selected substitutions were located on all 26 autosomes. The greatest number of polymorphisms were on the 1, 3, 6, 9, 12 and 22 chromosomes. The least substitutions were found on chromosomes 4, 8, 11 and 19. Only one substitution with the required frequency of occurrence was identified on the X chromosome. The average distance between SNPs was 4,000 to 7,000 kbp. The list of polymorphisms we have chosen can be used to confirm the reliability of the origin in the molecular genetic examination of sheep of the Russian Meat Merino breed.