Association of polymorphic variants of KAP 1.3 gene with wool traits in Rambouillet sheep

The objective of the present study was to investigate the association of polymorphic variants of keratin-associated protein (KAP) 1.3 gene with wool traits in Rambouillet sheep. Genomic DNA was isolated from blood samples of 100 Rambouillet sheep. A 598 bp KAP 1.3 gene segment was amplified by PCR using ovine specific primers. One SNP was confirmed by sequencing, which was C264T nucleotide transition mutation. Restriction Fragment Length Polymorphism (RFLP) using Bsr I restriction enzyme revealed two alleles A and B with 0.645 and 0.355 allele frequencies, respectively. Genotypic frequencies were 0.41 for AA, 0.47 for AB and 0.12 for BB genotypes. The. chi(2)-test value for KAP 1.3 gene was non-significant revealing that the population under study was in Hardy Weinberg Equilibrium (HWE). Significant differences for CWY and highly significant differences for FD, SL, WC and GFW were observed between the least squares means of sex. Males showed higher level of production for CWY (56.91+/-0.26%) and GFW (2.53+/-0.09 kg); whereas, females were found to be superior in FD (21.74+/-0.11 mu), SL (6.07+/-0.15 cm) and WC (62.80+/-0.29). The least squares means of various genotypes for GFW differed significantly. Highest GFW production was recorded for BB genotype (2.47+/-0.13 kg) followed by AB genotype (2.05+/-0.07 kg) and least by AA genotypes (1.62+/-0.08 kg). These results suggested that polymorphisms in the KAP 1.3 gene might be a potential molecular marker for genetic selection for GFW in Rambouillet sheep.