Epigenome-informed prioritization of bivalent chromatin SNPs enhances genomic prediction robustness: a proof-of-concept study in Pacific white shrimp (Litopenaeus vannamei)

BackgroundGenomic selection (GS) has revolutionized animal breeding, spanning livestock sectors such as pigs and cattle to aquatic species like fish and shrimp. However, its broader application across these industries is often constrained by high genotyping costs and reduced predictive reliability across divergent populations or generations. Developing cost-effective, biologically informed genotyping strategies to overcome these limitations remains a critical goal in animal agriculture. Epigenetic annotations, particularly histone modifications, provide direct functional insights into regulatory elements underlying complex trait variation and represent a promising but underexplored resource for marker prioritization. ResultsHere, using the Pacific white shrimp (Litopenaeus vannamei) as a model organism, we conducted a proof-of-concept study integrating resequencing and phenotypic data from 972 individuals. We generated high-resolution epigenomic maps by profiling four histone marks (H3K4me1, H3K4me3, H3K27me3, and H3K27ac) across multiple embryonic stages and adult muscle tissue using CUT&Tag. These functional annotations were then leveraged to prioritize single nucleotide polymorphism (SNP) subsets for genomic prediction. Among the tested strategies, SNPs located in the muscle-specific bivalent promoter/enhancer (E6) state--characterized by the co-occurrence of active and repressive marks--consistently maximized prediction accuracy under the BayesA model. Notably, even at a moderate density (15k), E6-derived SNPs achieved prediction accuracies exceeding those obtained using substantially larger genome-wide SNP sets. Most importantly, in a challenging cross-population validation using an independent strain, the E6-derived SNP subset significantly improved prediction accuracy by 47.6% (increasing from 0.21 {+/-} 0.05 to 0.31 {+/-} 0.04, p < 0.05) compared to random subsets at equivalent density. ConclusionsThese results demonstrate that epigenetic annotation-guided SNP prioritization provides a biologically informed and cost-effective strategy to enhance genomic prediction accuracy and stability. This framework is broadly transferable across species and offers a practical strategy for designing low-density genotyping panels that reduce costs while maintaining reliable selection outcomes in large-scale breeding programs.