Genomic approaches for the assessment of boar sperm quality

• Autores: Marta Gòdia Perelló
• Directores de la Tesis: Armando Sánchez Bonastre (dir. tes.), Alejandro Clop Ponte (dir. tes.)
• Lectura: En la Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona ( España ) en 2019
• Idioma: español
• Tribunal Calificador de la Tesis: M. Amills (presid.), Meritxell Jodar Bifet (secret.), Francesca Bertolini (voc.)
• Programa de doctorado: Programa de Doctorado en Producción Animal por la Universidad Autónoma de Barcelona
• Materias:
  • Ciencias de la vida
    • Biología animal (zoología)
      • Genética animal
    • Biología molecular
  • Ciencias agrarias
    • Producción animal
• Texto completo no disponible (Saber más ...)
• Resumen

  • In livestock, reproductive efficiency is one of the most important factors affecting production efficiency, as reproductive traits are key for the reduction of the cost to produce meat. Therefore, the swine industry has devoted large efforts to improve these traits by management, nutrition and genetics. However, little progress has been achieved by traditional selection schemes due to the low heritability and complex genetic architecture of reproductive traits in the pig. The study of the genetic basis of boar sperm quality and fertility is of growing interest for the pig industry. This is due to an increase of boar rejection rates caused by unacceptable semen parameters in commercial standards, which is obviously causing an important negative impact in the economy of the sector. The main objective of this thesis is to map the genetic basis and transcriptome differences associated to boar sperm quality. To fulfill this aim, genomic approaches of high-throughput genotyping (660K Porcine Genotyping Array, Axiom™) and massive sequencing (Total RNA-seq, small RNA-seq and Whole Genome Sequencing) have been used. The thesis includes the 5 following studies: (i) optimization of RNA extraction and RNA-seq library preparation kits for boar sperm and the effect of the phenotype on sperm purification; (ii) characterization of the boar sperm transcriptome and the effect of seasonability; (iii) characterization of circular RNAs in porcine sperm and their relation with sperm motility traits; (iv) an integrative approach using different ‘omics’ data to identify genomic regions and gene correlation networks associated to the boar sperm quality; (v) identification of potential regions in Allelic Ratio Distortion in sperm.