How does functional genomics help advance pig breeding in China?

??? The pig farming industry is a pillar industry of China's livestock sector, and breeding superior pigs that are high-yielding, high-quality and disease-resistant is the fundamental guarantee for achieving sustainable development of China's pig farming industry. In recent years, China has achieved a number of internationally influential results in the field of functional genomics research on pig growth, meat quality and disease resistance traits, but there is still a relative lack in the isolation and identification of functional genes for important economic traits in pigs, gene network regulation, and the construction of functional genomics platforms, which cannot meet the needs of China's pig breed improvement and pig molecular design breeding. In 2013, the modern agricultural technology field of the 863 Program launched the project "Functional Genomics Research on Important Economic Traits in Pigs." Recently, the Ministry of Science and Technology organized relevant experts to conduct a mid-term review of the project.

Since the launch of the project "Functional Genomics Research on Important Economic Traits in Pigs," the research team, targeting the strategic demand of China's pig farming industry for sustainable development through new achievements and new technologies in functional genomics, focused its key research content on functional genomics analysis of traits such as growth, meat quality and disease resistance, and the creation of large-scale mutant pig lines. It completed the collection of measurement data on different traits from more than 2,000 pigs and completed the genome (re)sequencing of more than 20 Chinese local pig breeds, including Rongchang pigs and Tibetan pigs. Through data analysis, the research team identified regions or genes under selection in different pig breeds. Based on genome sequencing analysis of Tibetan pigs, it revealed the omics mechanism of adaptive evolution to special environments in Tibetan pigs, and the related research results were published in the internationally renowned journal Nature Genetics. At the same time, the research team selected the piggyBac transposon vector pZG, co-electroporated the pZG plasmid and pCAG-4PB-ineo plasmid and used flow sorting of GFP-positive cells as donors, obtained pZG-positive pigs and healthy pCAG-4PB-ineo transgenic pigs, and created new piggyBac transgenic mutant pig materials. This method was proven to be an efficient, simple and low-cost effective approach for achieving large-scale gene mutation in pigs, and will greatly promote the development of livestock breeding and new medical drugs.

The mid-term review expert group believes that after more than two years of research, the research team of the project "Functional Genomics Research on Important Economic Traits in Pigs" has made considerable progress in improving tools and platforms for pig functional genomics research, analyzing pig genome structure, and omics analysis of economic traits such as growth and meat quality. This has important practical significance for achieving major theoretical and key technological breakthroughs in China's animal breeding and for improving China's pig functional genomics research level and independent innovation capacity. Ministry of Science and Technology