Association of polymorphism in 5'UTR and exon1 regions of myostatin gene with twining trait in Markhoz goat breed

This study aimed to investigate the myostatin gene polymorphisms and their relationship with twining trait in 150 individuals from Markhoz goat of Iran. A 573 bp fragment of the myostatin gene was amplified، which contained a deletion 5 bp indel (206 TTTTA/) and a single nucleotide polymorphism substitution (339 T/A) in 5`UTR and exon1 regions، respectively. The PCR products were separately digested for each position using DraI or HinIII restriction enzyme endonuclease. The digestion results revealed two AA and AB genotypes in 5`UTR region and three AA، AT، and TT genotypes in exon1 region of myostatin gene. Odds Ratio (OR) statistics for twinning trait was estimated 1. 4 (P>0. 05) and 4 (P<0. 1) in the first parity compared to the second and third parity، respectively. Also، the odds ratio was 4. 60 (P<0. 05) when the second parity was compared to the third parity. The amounts of OR and Chi-square statistics for the twining rate were 1. 84 and 13. 6 for the AA genotype on theTT genotype and also 0. 28 and 8. 46 for the TT genotype on AT genotype. The OR of the twining rate was estimated 0. 07 (P<0. 1) for the AB genotype compared to the AA genotype in 5`UTR region. The results of this research confirm a significant association between the myostatin gene and the twining rate in Markhoz goats and suggest more investigation in this field on other Iranian native goat breeds.