Myostatin gene and its relationship with some
economic traits
Polymorphisms for the myostatin gene have been used in
marker-assisted selection in cattle, but not in chickens.
Casas et al. (1998) showed that calves with two copies of
the inactive allele of the myostatin gene were more likely
to die before weaning, that calves with one copy of the
inactive allele had leaner and more muscled carcasses
than animals without inactive alleles, and that calves with
zero copy of the inactive allele were the highest in fat
content. Two polymorphic sites (G2100A and G2109A) in
the exon 1 of the myostatin gene in Wenling native
chicken were studied and the two mutations had
important genetic effects on carcass traits (Zhu et al.,
2007). Ye et al. (2007) found out that myostatin SNPs