Sheep zinc finger proteins 395 (ZNF395): insertion/deletion variations, associations with growth traits, and mRNA...

Zinc finger protein 395 (ZNF395), belonging to the Krüppel C2H2-type zinc-finger protein family, is a common transcription factor, which is involved in several cellular responses such as cell proliferation, differentiation, metabolism, and immunity, especially in the process of adipogenesis. In order to explore the insertion/deletion (indel) genetic variations of ZNF395 and evaluate their effects on sheep growth traits, a total of 1934 samples from five Chinese and two Mongolian sheep breeds were investigated. Genetic variation analysis of ZNF395 revealed a novel 23 bp indel at the intron 3 with three genotypes. Association analysis results showed that this locus was significantly associated with 10 different growth traits, especially chest width (p = 0.003) and chest circumference (p = 0.003) of Small Tail Han sheep and cannon circumference (p = 0.007) of Hu sheep. In addition, the mRNA expression of ZNF395 was investigated in two sheep breeds of different tail types. The result indicated that the expression was significantly different between the tail fat of Lanzhou Fat-Tail sheep and Small Tail Han sheep (p < 0.05). This study showed that the 23 bp indel locus in the ZNF395 gene were associated with sheep growth traits, which could be beneficial for animal breeding.