Sheep zinc finger proteins 395 (): insertion/deletion variations, associations with growth traits, and mRNA expression.

Zinc finger protein 395 (ZNF395), belonging to the Krüppel C2H2-type zinc-finger protein family, is a common transcription factor, which is involved in several cellular responses such as cell proliferation, differentiation, metabolism, and immunity, especially in the process of adipogenesis. In order to explore the insertion/deletion (indel) genetic variations of and evaluate their effects on sheep growth traits, a total of 1934 samples from five Chinese and two Mongolian sheep breeds were investigated. Genetic variation analysis of revealed a novel 23 bp indel at the intron 3 with three genotypes. Association analysis results showed that this locus was significantly associated with 10 different growth traits, especially chest width ( = 0.003) and chest circumference ( = 0.003) of Small Tail Han sheep and cannon circumference ( = 0.007) of Hu sheep. In addition, the mRNA expression of was investigated in two sheep breeds of different tail types. The result indicated that the expression was significantly different between the tail fat of Lanzhou Fat-Tail sheep and Small Tail Han sheep ( < 0.05). This study showed that the 23 bp indel locus in the gene were associated with sheep growth traits, which could be beneficial for animal breeding.