Back

An ancient deletion in the ABO gene affects the composition of the porcine microbiome by altering intestinal N-acetyl-galactosamine concentrations

Yang, H.; Wu, J.; Huang, X.; Zhou, Y.; Zhang, Y.; Liu, M.; Liu, Q.; Ke, S.; He, M.; Fu, H.; Fang, S.; Xiong, X.; Jiang, H.; Chen, Z.; Wu, Z.; Gong, H.; Tong, X.; Huang, Y.; Ma, J.; Gao, J.; Charlier, C.; Coppieters, W.; Shagam, L.; Zhang, Z.; Ai, H.; Yang, B.; Georges, M.; Chen, C.; Huang, L.

2020-07-16 genetics
10.1101/2020.07.16.206219 bioRxiv
Show abstract

We have generated a large heterogenous stock population by intercrossing eight divergent pig breeds for multiple generations. We have analyzed the composition of the intestinal microbiota at different ages and anatomical locations in > 1,000 6th- and 7th- generation animals. We show that, under conditions of exacerbated genetic yet controlled environmental variability, microbiota composition and abundance of specific taxa (including Christensenellaceae) are heritable in this monogastric omnivore. We fine-map a QTL with major effect on the abundance of Erysipelotrichaceae to chromosome 1q and show that it is caused by a common 2.3-Kb deletion inactivating the ABO acetyl-galactosaminyl-transferase gene. We show that this deletion is a trans-species polymorphism that is [≥]3.5 million years old and under balancing selection. We demonstrate that it acts by decreasing the concentrations of N-acetyl-galactosamine in the cecum thereby reducing the abundance of Erysipelotrichaceae strains that have the capacity to import and catabolize N-acetyl-galactosamine.

Matching journals

The top 7 journals account for 50% of the predicted probability mass.

50% of probability mass above

"Similar papers" are the closest papers from that journal in the model's embedding space. They show what the match is built on, but the ranking comes mostly from a classifier over the whole training set, not from these examples alone.