Abstract
BACKGROUND: Bone integrity is crucial for farm animals, particularly pigs, as it has direct impact on animal health and welfare as well as for a sustainable livestock farming. Blood serum provides valuable insight into bone metabolism and turnover by assessing key indicators of mineral utilization and bone development, such as serum calcidiol (vitamin D(3) storage form), calcitriol (vitamin D(3) active form), β-CTX (C-terminal telopeptide), and CICP (type I C-terminal collagen propeptide). Due to the substantial inter-individual variation observed in serum levels of vitamin D metabolites and bone remodelling markers, this study aimed to investigate the genetic contributions to this variability. The genetic determinants of serum calcidiol, calcitriol, β-CTX, and CICP were investigated in a population of 610 purebred German Landrace pigs. Genetic diversity was maximized by selecting individuals (sib-pairs) from different litters, with animals aged 166 ± 14 days. The phenotypic traits were investigated by a genome-wide association study (GWAS). RESULTS: Genomic heritability estimates for these phenotypes showed moderate to low heritability with serum calcidiol (0.14), calcitriol (0.12), ß-CTX (0.15), and CICP (0.12). A total of 17 genomic regions on different chromosomes were identified that contain single-nucleotide polymorphisms significantly associated with these four phenotypes. The integration of positional and functional aspects revealed a total of 23 candidate genes with the highest relevance of PTH, GC, ALB for serum calcidiol, PDPN for serum calcitriol and BTG1, FASN, FOXK2 for serum ß-CTX, and RETSAT, ATOH8, FGF11, ALOX15 for serum CICP. CONCLUSION: The results emphasize the potential for developing innovative breeding criteria that specifically target bone health in pigs. Hence, mineral utilization efficiency might be indirectly improved which remains to be empirically demonstrated through further research.