Differentiation of the domestic pig and wild boar using genotyping-by-sequencing

KOSENiUK A., SMOLUcHA G., GURGUL A., SzMATOLA T., OczKOwicz M., RADKO A. 2023. Differentiation of the domestic pig and wild boar using genotyping-by-sequencing. Folia Biologica (Krakow) 71: 01-11. Domestic pigs and wild boars have undergone frequent interspecies crossbreeding; therefore, the presence of hybrids makes it challenging to find genetic markers that distinguish both subspecies. The aim of this research is to identify the DNA regions that underwent strong selection during the domestication of the pig and to give an insight into the genetic diversity of the Polish wild boar and domestic pigs by implementing the genotyping-by-sequencing (GBS) technique. We studied two groups of animals: one consisted of do-mestic pigs (Landrace, Large White, Duroc, Pulawska and Pietrain), while the second group included wild boars from Poland. The filtered single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNP) panel used in this study included 7,298 markers that were spread across 18 porcine autosomes and unmapped contigs. The maximum -like-lihood phylogenetic trees and multidimensional scaling (MDS) clearly separated the populations of pigs from the wild boars. We also detected genome regions that demonstrated the most significant genetic differences between the domestic pigs and wild boars. These regions were distributed on eight different autosomes and overlapped with 48 different pig RefSeq genes. The KEGG pathway, Reactome and GO terms were further used to assign a functional significance to the identified genes that were associated with inter alia muscle development (MYOG, MEOX2), pre-weaning mortality stress (MYO7A) and sensory perception (TAS1R3).

Automated summary

This study used genotyping-by-sequencing to analyze the genetic diversity of Polish wild boars and domestic pigs, identified DNA regions with significant genetic differences between the two subspecies, and determined genes associated with muscle development, pre-weaning mortality stress, and sensory perception.