INTRODUCTION
Boer goat, which was first domesticated in South Africa in the early 19th century, has attracted worldwide attention due to its stable production performance, fast growth rate, and high meat production (Casey et al., 1998). Owing to the extensive introduction and breeding of Boer goats in worldwide, comprehensive and detailed studies have been conducted on various characteristics of Boer goat. Many studies have successively explored their adaptability, growth performance, and hybrid improvement. Particularly, many dominant genotypes of economic traits due to long-term selection have been discovered (Yang et al., 2011; Silveira et al., 2002).
Insertion/deletion markers (InDels) are a kind of structural variation widely studied in various biology fields. For example, an 8 bp duplicated frameshift insertion in FOXF1 is linked to alveolar capillary dysplasia associated with pulmonary vein dislocation in human (Karolak et al., 2019). A 1,423 bp InDel in the cis-regulatory region of LanFTc1 is related to the vernalization and flowering time ofLupinus angustifolius (Taylor et al., 2019). A 49 bp deletion in the 3สน-untranslated region (UTR) of the MTNA gene is correlated to increased oxidative stress tolerance in Drosophila (Ramnarine et al., 2019). In domestic animals, a bounteously InDel is connected to various economic traits, such as litter size (Li et al., 2020; Akhatayeva et al., 2020;), reproduction (Chen et al., 2019), growth (Zhang et al., 2019; Wang et al., 2019; Li et al., 2020; Cui et al., 2019), milk (Ju et al., 2020). Especially in goat, abundant results have been obtained in this area. For example, 11 and 14 bp InDels within theCSN1S1 and CMTM2 genes are substantially associated with litter size (Kang et al., 2019; Wang et al., 2018). InDels within intron 2 of goat IGF2BP1 and the UTRs are remarkably associated with their growth traits (Wang et al., 2020). An 11 bp InDel polymorphism within the CSN1S1 gene is associated with milk performance and body measurement traits (Zhang et al., 2019).
As a special meat breed, Boer goat has experienced long-term artificial selection. Owing to its extremely outstanding growth performance, this domestic animal is an important natural model in studies on artificial breeding. In this work, InDel mutations from Boer goats were investigated to determine potential InDel variants by using genome re-sequencing technology. The results provide a theoretical basis for the study of genetic mechanisms and support the valuable molecular genetic markers for the economic traits and molecular breeding of goat in the future.