ORIGINAL RESEARCH published: 16 August 2021 doi: 10.3389/fgene.2021.723980 Genome-Wide Association Study of Growth Performance and Immune Response to Newcastle Disease Virus of Indigenous Chicken in Rwanda Richard Habimana 1,2*, Kiplangat Ngeno 2, Tobias Otieno Okeno 2, Claire D’ andre Hirwa 3, Christian Keambou Tiambo 4 and Nasser Kouadio Yao 5 1 College of Agriculture, Animal Science and Veterinary Medicine, University of Rwanda, Kigali, Rwanda, 2 Animal Breeding and Genomics Group, Department of Animal Science, Egerton University, Egerton, Kenya, 3 Rwanda Agricultural and Animal Resources Development Board, Kigali, Rwanda, 4 Centre for Tropical Livestock Genetics and Health, International Livestock Research Institute, Nairobi, Kenya, 5 Biosciences Eastern and Central Africa – International Livestock Research Institute (BecA-ILRI) Hub, Nairobi, Kenya A chicken genome has several regions with quantitative trait loci (QTLs). However, Edited by: replication and confirmation of QTL effects are required particularly in African chicken Younes Miar, Dalhousie University, populations. This study identified single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) and putative Canada genes responsible for body weight (BW) and antibody response (AbR) to Newcastle Reviewed by: disease (ND) in Rwanda indigenous chicken (IC) using genome-wide association studies Sayed Haidar Abbas, Northwest A & F University, China (GWAS). Multiple testing was corrected using chromosomal false detection rates of 5 and Suxu Tan, 10% for significant and suggestive thresholds, respectively. BioMart data mining and Michigan State University, variant effect predictor tools were used to annotate SNPs and candidate genes, respectively. United States A total of four significant SNPs (rs74098018, rs13792572, rs314702374, and rs14123335) *Correspondence: Richard Habimana significantly (p ≤ 7.6E−5) associated with BW were identified on chromosomes (CHRs)
[email protected] 8, 11, and 19.