Genetic diversity, linkage disequilibrium and selection signatures in Chinese and Western pigs revealed by genome-wide SNP markers

To investigate population structure, linkage disequilibrium (LD) pattern and selection signature at the genome level in Chinese and Western pigs, we genotyped 304 unrelated animals from 18 diverse populations using porcine 60 K SNP chips. We confirmed the divergent evolution between Chinese and Western pigs and showed distinct topological structures of the tested populations. We acquired the evidence for the introgression of Western pigs into two Chinese pig breeds. Analysis of runs of homozygosity revealed that historical inbreeding reduced genetic variability in several Chinese breeds. We found that intrapopulation LD extents are roughly comparable between Chinese and Western pigs. However, interpopulation LD is much longer in Western pigs compared with Chinese pigs with average r20.3 values of 125 kb for Western pigs and only 10.5 kb for Chinese pigs. The finding indicates that higher-density markers are required to capture LD with causal variants in genome-wide association studies a...