Abstract:

In the face of subsequently tightening animal welfare laws, genetic alternatives for docking tails of lambs in long-tailed sheep breeds are urgently needed. This study aimed to analyse the natural tail length variation in the Merinolandschaf breed and to identify possible causal genes for the short tail phenotype. Combined linkage disequilibrium and linkage mapping based on Illumina OvineSNP50 genotypes of 362 Merinolandschaf lambs resulted in two maximum likelihood ratio test statistic (LRT) peaks which were above the genome-wide significance threshold of LRT=16.63. HOXB13 was identified as the most relevant candidate gene due to its proximity to the LRT maximum of 29.11 at position 37,311,843 bp on sheep chromosome 11 and its known function as an inhibitor of posterior axial growth. Further studies are needed for an Identification of the causal mutations, linked variants or more precise haplotypes to enable gene- or marker-assisted selection for breeding towards shorter tails