¹Erciyes Üniversitesi, Department of Animal Breeding and Husbandry, TR-38280 Kayseri - TURKEY
²Erciyes Üniversitesi, Department of Genetics, Faculty of Veterinary Medicine, TR-38280 Kayseri - TURKEY
³Erciyes Üniversitesi, Department of Animal Science, Faculty of Agriculture, TR-38280 Kayseri - TURKEY DOI : 10.9775/kvfd.2018.20055 Early live weight in sheep is important for lamb survival and average weight gain until slaughter. The aim of the present study was to investigate association between CAST-MspI, DGAT1-AluI and IGF-1-Bsp143II polymorphisms and early live weights between birth and weaning age in Akkaraman lambs. A total of 374 lambs were genotyped for CAST-MspI, DGAT1-AluI and IGF-1-Bsp143II polymorphisms by the polymerase chain reaction and restriction length polymorphism (PCR-RFLP) method. The results of PCR-RFLP analysis showed that the SNPs had three genotypes of CAST-MspI polymorphism, two genotypes of DGAT1-AluI polymorphism and one genotype of IGF-1-Bsp143II polymorphism of these, CAST-MspI-MM, DGAT1-AluI-CC and IGF-1-Bsp143II-BB were the predominant genotypes in the Akkaraman sheep breed. The result of Chi-square analysis indicated that the Akkaraman sheep breed was in Hardy-Weinberg equilibrium for the investigated polymorphic genes. At the DGAT1 locus, the CT genotype showed significantly heavier birth weight (P=0.044) compared to CC genotype. CAST gene did not show any association for the investigated traits. The results of this study demonstrate that the CT genotype had a positive effect on birth weight in Akkaraman sheep. We concluded that further investigations are needed in DGAT1-AluI polymorphism and live weight at different ages in sheep. Keywords : Birth weight, DGAT1, polymorphism, RFLP, Sheep