Pathway enrichment and protein interaction network analysis for milk yield, fat yield and age at first calving in a Thai multibreed dairy population

Objective: This research aimed to determine biological pathways and protein-protein interaction (PPI) networks for 305-d milk yield (MY), 305-d fat yield (FY), and age at first calving (AFC) in the Thai multibreed dairy population. Methods: Genotypic information contained 75,776 imputed and actual single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNP) from 2,661 animals. Single-step genomic best linear unbiased predictions were utilized to estimate SNP genetic variances for MY, FY, and AFC. Fixed effects included herd-year-season, breed regression and heterosis regression effects. Random effects were animal additive genetic and residual. Individual SNP explaining at least 0.001% of the genetic variance for each trait were used to identify nearby genes in the National Center for Biotechnology Information database. Pathway enrichment analysis was performed. The PPI of genes were identified and visualized of the PPI network. Results: Identified genes were involved in 16 enriched pathways related to MY, FY, and AFC. Most genes had two or more connections with other genes in the PPI network. Genes associated with MY, FY, and AFC based on the biological pathways and PPI were primarily involved in cellular processes. The percent of the genetic variance explained by genes in enriched pathways (303) was 2.63% for MY, 2.59% for FY, and 2.49% for AFC. Genes in the PPI network (265) explained 2.28% of the genetic variance for MY, 2.26% for FY, and 2.12% for AFC. Conclusion: These sets of SNP associated with genes in the set enriched pathways and the PPI network could be used as genomic selection targets in the Thai multibreed dairy population. This study should be continued both in this and other populations subject to a variety of environmental conditions because predicted SNP values will likely differ across populations subject to different environmental conditions and changes over time.