Copy number variation (CNV) in the gene across four cattle breeds and its association with economic traits.

The insulin-like growth factor 1 receptor (IGF1R) plays a vital role in immunomodulation and muscle and bone growth. The copy number variation (CNV) is believed to the reason for many complex phenotypic variations. In this paper, we statistically analyzed the copy number and the expression profiling in different tissue types of the gene using the 422 samples from four Chinese beef cattle breeds, and the mRNA of was widely expressed in nine tissue types of adult cattle (heart, liver, kidney, muscle, fat, stomach, spleen, lung and testis). Results of CNV and growth traits indicated that the CNV was significantly associated with body weight and body height of Jinnan (JN) cattle and was significantly associated with body height and hucklebone width of Qinchuan (QC) cattle, making CNV a promising molecular marker to improve meat production in beef cattle breeding. Bioinformatics predictions show that the CNV region is highly similar to the human genome, and there are a large number of transcription factors, DNase I hypersensitive sites, and high levels of histone acetylation, suggesting that this region may play a role in transcriptional regulation, providing directions for further study of the role of bovine CNV and economic traits.