Full Length Research Paper

Association of LXRA gene variants with carcass and meat quality traits in beef cattle

Qianfu Gan^{1, 2}, Lupei Zhang², Shangzhong Xu^{1, 2}*, Hengde Li², Junya Li², Xue Gao², Hongyan Ren² and Jinbao Chen²

¹College of Animal Science and Technology, Northwest A & F University, Yangling, Shaanxi 712100, China.

²Institute of Animal Science, Chinese Academy of Agricultural Sciences, Beijing 100094, China.

*Corresponding author. E-mail: simmenta@vip.sina.com. Tel: +86 10 62816065. Fax: +86 10 62817806. 

Accepted 28 July, 2008

LXRA is an important regulator of genes involved in lipid, fatty acid and glucose metabolism in liver, and adipose tissue as well as in skeletal muscle. In this study, we discovered and evaluated the association of two SNPs (T1891C in intron 2, and A2377G in exon 3) in the bovine LXRA gene with carcass and meat quality traits in beef cattle. The T1891C SNP was significantly associated with carcass weight (CW), dressing percentage (DP), meat percent (MP) and loin muscle area (LMA) (P < 0.05). Animals with the genotype TT had higher CW, DP, MP and LMA than the CT genotype. No significant associations were observed between the A2377G SNP and any traits analyzed in this study (P>0.05). These results suggested that T1891C SNP of the LXRA gene may be useful as a genetic marker for carcass and meat quality traits in beef cattle.

Key words: Cattle, LXRA gene, polymorphism, carcass, meat.