Five genomic regions have a major impact on fat composition in Iberian pigs

The adipogenic nature of the Iberian pig defines many quality attributes of its fresh meat and dry-cured products. The distinct varieties of Iberian pig exhibit great variability in the genetic parameters for fat deposition and composition in muscle. The aim of this work is to identify common and distinct genomic regions related to fatty acid composition in Retinto, Torbiscal, and Entrepelado Iberian varieties and their reciprocal crosses through a diallelic experiment. In this study, we performed GWAS using a high density SNP array on 382 pigs with the multimarker regression Bayes B method implemented in GenSel. A number of genomic regions showed strong associations with the percentage of saturated and unsaturated fatty acid in intramuscular fat. In particular, five regions with Bayes Factor >100 (SSC2 and SSC7) or >50 (SSC2 and SSC12) explained an important fraction of the genetic variance for miristic, palmitoleic, monounsaturated (>14%), oleic (>10%) and polyunsaturated (>5%) fatty acids. Six genes (RXRB, PSMB8, CHGA, ACACA, PLIN4, PLIN5) located in these regions have been investigated in relation to intramuscular composition variability in Iberian pigs, with two SNPs at the RXRB gene giving the most consistent results on oleic and monounsaturated fatty acid content.