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Abstract
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Growth is an important heritable economic trait for dromedaries and necessary for planning
a successful breeding program. Until now, genome-wide association studies (GWAS) and QTLmapping have identified significant single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) associated with growth
in domestic animals, but in dromedaries, the number of studies is very low. This project aimed to
find biological themes affecting growth in dromedaries. In the first step, 99 candidate SNPs were
chosen from a previously established set of SNPs associated with body weight, gain, and birth weight
in Iranian dromedaries. Next, 0.5 kb upstream and downstream of each candidate SNP were selected
from NCBI (assembly accession: GCA_000803125.3). The annotation of fragments with candidate
SNPs regarding the reference genome was retrieved using the Blast2GO tool. Candidate SNPs
associated with growth were mapped to 22 genes, and 25 significant biological themes were identified
to be related to growth in dromedaries. The main biological functions included calcium ion binding,
protein binding, DNA-binding transcription factor activity, protein kinase activity, tropomyosin
binding, myosin complex, actin-binding, ATP binding, receptor signaling pathway via JAK-STAT, and
cytokine activity. EFCAB5, MTIF2, MYO3A, TBX15, IFNL3, PREX1, and TMOD3 genes are candidates
for improving growth in camel breeding programs.
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