Genetic characterization of porcine populations tolerant to new variants of African swine fever virus using a medium-density DNA chip
New article published in Actas Iberoamericanas de Conservación Animal
January 22nd, 2015
Cañon J., Gallardo C., Dunner S., Sevane N., Cortés O., Bishop R., Arias M., Sanchez-Vizcaino JM. and Carleos C.
Recent studies in East Africa have revealed a complex epidemiological situation in
local breeds of domestic pig that seems to show greater tolerance to the African
swine fever virus (ASFV) which favors the endemic nature of the disease in these
regions, allowing its dispersion. This tolerance may have higher relation with the
genetic characteristics of the animal than with the viral structure itself. In this work,
the genetic characterization of local African pig populations, both domestic and wild,
that may be related to the ASF disease tolerance was carried out. The whole set of
samples included 112 animals belonging to different European breeds (large white,
berkshire, landrace, middle white), 22 hybrids of European breeds sampled in Kenia
and Tanzania, 32 animals from local African populations with a proportion of other
breeds, and 22 animals from the wild populations Phacochoerus africanus (17) and
Potamochoerus larvatus (5). Of them 103 animals were genotyped with the Porcine
SNP60 BeadChip v.2 (Illumina, San Diego, CA, USA) and 85 with the Porcine
SNP60 BeadChip v.1 (Illumina, San Diego, CA, USA). For a preliminary analysis of
the relative positioning of the populations included in the analysis, the selection of a
representative set of markers with reduced level of linkage disequilibrium (LD) was
performed using frames of 50 SNPs, leaving 5 SNPs between frames, and selecting
those with < 0.01 LD. This selection process resulted on 538 SNPs that were used to
obtain information about the structure of the analyzed populations. A limited
usefulness of the Porcine SNP60 BeadChip on wild populations was proved owed to
its low discrimination power. Hence, in a second stage we genotyped 79 animals
selected among the 103 analyzed with the Porcine SNP60 BeadChip v.2 using a set
of 28 microsatellite markers, obtaining as result the failure to detect hybridization
between local and wild African suids. The identification of three consensus regions
of homozygosity between resistant populations and wild suids, located in two
chromosomes, may allow seeking out genes with a relevant role in the higher
tolerance of the domestic pig populations to ASFV
 | Departamento de Producción Animal. Facultad de Veterinaria. Universidad Complutense (UCM). 111 |
 | Centro de Investigación en Sanidad Animal (CISA). Instituto Nacional de Investigación y Tecnología Agraria y Alimentaria (INIA). 111 |
 | Ministerio de Economía y Competitividad (MINECO). 111 |
| Departamento de Sanidad Animal. Facultad de Veterinaria. Universidad Complutense (UCM). 111 |
| Servicio de Inmunología Viral y Medicina Preventiva (SUAT). Centro de Vigilancia Sanitaria Veterinaria (VISAVET). Universidad Complutense (UCM). 111 |
| International Livestock Research Institute (ILRI). 111 | |
 | Universidad de Oviedo. 111 |
