Population Variation Reveals Independent Selection toward Small Body Size in Chinese Debao Pony.

ABSTRACT: Body size, one of the most important quantitative traits under evolutionary scrutiny, varies considerably among species and among populations within species. Revealing the genetic basis underlying this variation is very important, particularly in humans where there is a close relationship with diseases and in domestic animals as the selective patterns are associated with improvements in production traits. The Debao pony is a horse breed with small body size that is unique to China; however, it is unknown whether the size-related candidate genes identified in Western breeds also account for the small body size of the Debao pony. Here, we compared individual horses from the Debao population with other two Chinese horse populations using single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) identified with

SUBMITTER: Kader A 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC4758242 | biostudies-literature | 2015 Dec

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature