Characteristics of romanov breed locus bmp-15, responsible for prolificacy of the sheep

The article deals with the actual problem, the diagnostics of the prolificacy gene in sheep of the Romanov breed. The new method for the diagnostics of the polymorphic gene of the bone morphogenetic protein 15 (BMP-15), which causes the multiple pregnancy in the Romanov sheep, has been proposed based on the carried out surveys. The frequencies of occurrence of the normal (wild type) and mutant alleles responsible for the multiple pregnancy-related locus and the genotypes in the sheep are present. The economic indicators including the numbers of newborn lambs, the lambs at winning, and the dry and culled ewes were recorded with taking into consideration the genotypes of the BMP-15 locus. The relationships between the frequency of occurrence and the number of the produced posterity and between the dry and culled Romanov ewes were ascertained. It was proved that the highest percentage of the lamb output at birth to weaning was typical for the ewes homozygous (MM) for a mutant allele. The animals referred to as heterozygous genotypes (WM) appeared to be in the second position. With respect to the wild genotype, the highest percentage of the culled and dry ewes was recorded in the carriers of the WW homozygote. The obtained results allow us to conclude that the genotype frequency at the BMP-15 locus should be taken into account while estimating the fertility of the ewes. Therefore, the further researches into the determined phenomena in the Romanov sheep are required to improve this item, since the multi-fetal pregnancy is recorded in some ewes of group WW.