Genetics. Published Articles Ahead of Print: June 18, 2008, Copyright © 2008
doi:10.1534/genetics.107.084483


A more recent version of this article appeared on July 1, 2008.

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QTL by environment interaction for milk yield traits on Bos Taurus Autosome 6

Marie Lillehammer 1*, Mike Goddard 2, Heidi Nilsen 1, Erling Sehested 3, Hanne Gro Olsen 1, Sigbjørn Lien 1 and Theo Meuwissen 1

1 Norwegian University of Life Sciences
2 Department of Primary Industries
3 Geno Breeding and AI organization

* To whom correspondence should be addressed. E-mail: marie.lillehammer{at}umb.no.

Submitted on November 13, 2007
Revised on February 4, 2008
Accepted on 21 April 2008


Abstract

Genotype by environment interactions for production traits in dairy cattle have often been observed, while QTL analyses have focused on detecting genes with general effects on production traits. In this study, a QTL search for genes with environmental interaction for the traits milk yield, protein yield and fat yield were performed on Bos Taurus autosome 6 (BTA6), also including information about the previously investigated candidate genes ABCG2 and OPN. The animals in the study were Norwegian Red. Eighteen grandsires and 716 sires were genotyped for 362 markers on BTA6. Every marker bracket was regarded as a putative QTL position. The effects of the candidate genes and the putative QTL were modelled as a regression on an environmental parameter (herd-year), which is based on the predicted herd-year effect for the trait. Two QTL were found to have environmentally dependent effects on milk yield. These QTL were located 3.6cM upstream and 9.1cM downstream from ABCG2. No environmentally dependent QTL was found to significantly affect protein or fat yield.

Key Words: ABCG2, dairy cattle, environmental sensitivity, gene by environment interaction, random regression