Association Analysis of LCORL Genetic Variant (rs657074013A>AT) with Body-Height and Skeletal Frame in Pakistani Goats

Goat is one of the most valued and cost-effective household animals serving humanity by providing its meat, milk, fiber, skin and manure. Particularly, meat and milk production depends on the physical traits of the animals e.g., large body-size/skeletal frame. Previous studies has shown that the LCORL gene is associated with the subject traits in humans and many other animal species. So, the current study is aimed to investigate the genetic variability/association of rs657074013A>AT variant within diverse goats from Pakistan. By using ARMS-PCR, a total of 51 samples were genotyped with allele-specific primer-set, results of the current study depicted that, 27% population is homozygous wild-type (A/A), 24% homozygous-mutant (AT/AT) and 49% is heterozygous (A/AT). Hardy Weinberg Equilibrium (HWE) analysis revealed that our overall sampled population obeys this principle with{chi} 2(2, N = 51) = 0.046, p = 0.9730. Similarly, a significant genetic association was also envisioned by Chi-square statistics p = 9.60 x 10-5 using the PLINK data analysis toolset. Furthermore, alternative allele frequencies of 0.68 and 0.28 were also calculated within cases (n=25) and control (n=26) cohorts respectively along with an odds ratio of 5.242. As a nutshell, this pilot study improved our genomic insight by observing the variability and association of the subject LCORL genetic variant (c.828_829insA) in the Pakistani goat population, which may be used to improve this economically important trait by adopting marker-assisted breeding strategies and further investigated within other livestock species as well.