The GENE-SWitCH project faces its last meetings and the valorisation of its results

On 14 and 15 June, the 4th annual meeting of the European H2020 project GENE-SWitCH took place in Rome, and the researcher Maria Ballester participated on behalf of IRTA.

This project aims to identify and characterise functional elements in the genome of pigs and chickens during their development. Through their activation or repression, they can contribute to the phenotypes of adult animals.

This functional information is used to increase the accuracy of genomic prediction models. IRTA has contributed to the generation of expression data and eQTL analysis and empirical validation of models with intermediate phenotypes (expression) and ordinary phenotypes (immunity traits and indicators of stress, feed efficiency and other production traits).

During the meeting, the main results obtained in the last year on functional annotation and their impact on the main production traits were presented. The best way to transfer these results to the pig and poultry sectors was also discussed.

IRTA’s Animal Breeding and Genetics programme has generated a catalogue of transcriptional genetic variants in the liver, duodenum and muscle tissues of pigs. These results have recently been published in the scientific journal GigaScience.