UTS2R gene polymorphisms are associated with fatty acid composition in Japanese beef cattle

Fatty acid composition of beef adipose tissue is one of its important traits because a high proportion of monounsaturated fatty acid is related to favorable beef flavor and tenderness. In this study, we searched polymorphisms in full length coding DNA sequence of urotensin 2 recepter and investigated the effects on fatty acid composition (C14:0, C14:1, C16:0, C16:1, C18:0, C18:1, C18:2, monounsaturated fatty acid, saturated fatty acid). Eight single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNP) were identified by sequence comparison among eight animals, including five Japanese Black and three Holstein cattle. One of these SNP (c.866C>T) was predicted to cause amino acid substitutions (P289L) and the other seven synonymous SNP, including c.267C>T, were presumed to be in linkage disequilibrium. Therefore we selected two SNP (c.267C>T and c.866C>T) for further analysis. We investigated associations between these genotypes and fatty acid composition in three Japanese Black populations (n = 560, 245 and 287) and a Holstein population (n = 202). Tukey‐Kramer's honestly significant difference test revealed that CC genotype in c.267C>T indicated lower C14:0 and higher C18:1 than the other genotypes in Japanese Black cattle and CC genotype in c.866C>T showed lower C16:1 than CT genotype in Holstein cattle (P < 0.05). These results suggested that these genotypes would contribute to production of high‐grade meat as selection markers in beef cattle.