Originally published as Genetics Published Articles Ahead of Print on February 3, 2008.

Genetics, Vol. 178, 1639-1652, March 2008, Copyright © 2008
doi:10.1534/genetics.107.084269

Selection in the Making: A Worldwide Survey of Haplotypic Diversity Around a Causative Mutation in Porcine IGF2

A. Ojeda^*, L.-S. Huang, J. Ren, A. Angiolillo, I.-C. Cho, H. Soto^**, C. Lemús-Flores, S. M. Makuza, J. M. Folch^* and M. Pérez-Enciso^*,,1

^* Departament de Ciència Animal i dels Aliments, Facultat de Veterinària, Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona, 08193 Bellaterra, Spain, Key Laboratory for Animal Biotechnology of Jiangxi Province and the Ministry of Agriculture of China, Jiangxi Agricultural University, Nanchang 330045, China, Dipartimento di Scienze e Tecnologie per l'Ambiente e il Territorio, Facoltà di Scienze Matematiche, Fisiche e Naturali, Università del Molise, 86090 Pesche, Italy, Division of Livestock, National Institute of Subtropical Agriculture, R.D.A., 175-6, O-Deung Dong, Jeju, 690-150, South Korea, ^** Facultad de Ciencias Agroalimentarias, Universidad de Costa Rica, San Pedro, Costa Rica, Universidad Autónoma de Nayarit, 63155 Tepic, Mexico, Department of Animal Science, University of Zimbabwe, MP167, Mount Pleasant, Harare, Zimbabwe and Institut Català de Recerca i Estudis Avançats (ICREA), 08010 Barcelona, Spain

¹ Corresponding author: Departament de Ciència Animal i dels Aliments, Facultat de Veterinària, Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona, 08193 Bellaterra, Spain.
E-mail: miguel.perez{at}uab.es

Domestic species allow us to study dramatic evolutionary changes at an accelerated rate due to the effectiveness of modern breeding techniques and the availability of breeds that have undergone distinct selection pressures. We present a worldwide survey of haplotype variability around a known causative mutation in porcine gene IGF2, which increases lean content. We genotyped 34 SNPs spanning 27 kb in 237 domestic pigs and 162 wild boars. Although the selective process had wiped out variability for at least 27 kb in the haplotypes carrying the mutation, there was no indication of an overall reduction in genetic variability of international vs. European local breeds; there was also no evidence of a reduction in variability caused by domestication. The haplotype structure and a plot of Tajima's D against the frequency of the causative mutation across breeds suggested a temporal pattern, where each breed corresponded to a different selective stage. This was observed comparing the haplotype neighbor-joining (NJ) trees of breeds that have undergone increasing selection pressures for leanness, e.g., European local breeds vs. Pietrain. These results anticipate that comparing current domestic breeds will decisively help to recover the genetic history of domestication and contemporary selective processes.

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