Associations of polymorphisms in the Mx1 gene with immunity traits in Large White×Meishan F2 offspring

The mouse myxovirus resistance protein 1 (Mx1) is known to be sufficient to confer resistance to influenza viruses, and the gene encoding Mx1 is, therefore, an interesting candidate gene for disease resistance in farm animals. The porcine Mx-1 gene has already been identified and characterized based on its homology with mouse Mx1; the full-length coding region of the pig Mx1 gene spans 2,545 bp (M65087) and is organized into 17 exons compared with the human ortholog mRNA. In this study, the exons 9, 10 and 11 and introns 6 and 9 of the porcine Mx1 gene were cloned and sequenced. Two SNPs were identified in exons 9, 10 and 11 but none of the SNPs led to an amino acid exchange, and the other eleven variants were detected in introns 6 and 9, respectively. Differences in allele frequency between Meishan and other pig breeds were observed within intron 6, of which an A→G substitution at position 371 was detected as an SnaBI PCR-RFLP. The association analysis using the Large WhitexMeishan F 2 offspring suggested that the Mx1 genotype was associated with variation in several immunity traits that are of interest in pig breeding. However, further investigations in more populations are needed to confirm the above result.