Discovery of genetic variants for fatty acid binding proteins of pig (Brief Report)

Abstract. Back fat thickness (BFT) and intramuscular fat (IMF) contents are known as major issues affecting meat performance. Several types of fatty acid-binding proteins (FABPs), which involve signal transduction pathways, are abundantly presented in tissues such as intestine, liver, kidney, mammary gland, heart, and red skeletal muscle (Nechtelberger et al. 2001). FABPs have been reported to be differentially expressed genes during porcine adipogenesis (Samulin et al. 2008) and related to fat deposition (Szczerbal et al. 2007). Accordingly FABPs may be candidate genes to explain variation of fat related traits in pigs. Therefore, it is an essential process to search genetic variants that may provide useful genetic information to study associations with quantitative loci (QTL).