Genome wide association study of cholesterol and poly- and monounsaturated fatty acids, protein, and mineral content of beef from crossbred cattle

• Nutrient analysis of steaks from cattle segregating the inactive myostatin allele
• Genomic heritability of lipid and mineral traits ranged from 0.05 to 0.75.
• Top 0.5% 1-Mb windows for all traits explained up to 9.93% of the SNP variance
• GEBV correlations were similar for CH, MUFA and PUFA traits across cuts.
• Differences between cuts measured on a percent fat basis or mg/100 g of wet tissue

The objectives were to determine the variation explained by the BovineSNP50v2 BeadChip for cholesterol (CH), polyunsaturated fatty acids (PUFA), monounsaturated fatty acids (MUFA), protein, and minerals in beef cattle, and to identify chromosomal regions that harbor major allelic variants underlying the variation of these traits. Crossbred steers and heifers (n = 236) segregating at the inactive myostatin allele on BTA2 were harvested and steaks were sampled from the M. semitendinosus and the M. longissimus thoracis et lumborum for nutrient analysis. A Bayes C algorithm was employed in genome-wide association analysis. The resulting posterior heritability (SD) estimates ranged from 0.43 (0.10) to 0.71 (0.08) for lipid traits and 0.05 (0.08) to 0.75 (0.06) for mineral traits. Across cuts, correlations between genomic estimated breeding values (GEBV) were similar for CH, MUFA and PUFA. The top 0.5% 1-Mb windows for all traits explained up to 9.93% of the SNP variance. Slight differences did exist between cuts and between different measurement scales of fatty acids.