Ovine Variants and Their Influence on Selected Wool Traits of Commercial Value.

Keratins are the main structural protein components of wool fibres, and variation in them and their genes () is thought to influence wool structure and characteristics. The PCR-single strand conformation polymorphism technique has been used previously to investigate genetic variation in selected coding and intron regions of the type II sheep keratin gene , but no variation was identified. In this study, we used the same technique to explore the 5' untranslated region of and detected three sequence variants (, and ) that contain four single nucleotide polymorphisms. Among the 389 Merino × Southdown cross sheep investigated, variant was linked to a reduction in clean fleece weight, while was associated with an increase in both greasy fleece weight and clean fleece weight. No discernible effects on staple length or mean-fibre-diameter-related traits were observed. These findings suggest that variation in ovine might influence wool growth by changing the density of wool follicles in the skin, the density of individual fibres, or the area of the skin producing fibre, as opposed to changing the rate of extrusion of fibres or their diameter.