{Reference Type}: Journal Article {Title}: Identification of Growth-Associated Genes by Genome-Wide Association Study and Their Potential Application in the Breeding of Pacific White Shrimp (Litopenaeus vannamei). {Author}: Lyu D;Yu Y;Wang Q;Luo Z;Zhang Q;Zhang X;Xiang J;Li F; {Journal}: Front Genet {Volume}: 12 {Issue}: 0 {Year}: 2021 {Factor}: 4.772 {DOI}: 10.3389/fgene.2021.611570 {Abstract}: The Pacific white shrimp (Litopenaeus vannamei) is the most widely cultured shrimp in the world. A great attention has been paid to improve its body weight (BW) at harvest through genetic selection for decades. Genome-wide association study (GWAS) is a tool to dissect the genetic basis of the traits. In this study, a GWAS approach was conducted to find genes related to BW through genotyping 94,113 single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) in 200 individuals from a breeding population. Four BW-related SNPs located in LG19 and LG39 were identified. Through further candidate gene association analysis, the SNPs in two candidate genes, deoxycytidylate deaminase and non-receptor protein tyrosine kinase, were found to be related with the body weight of the shrimp. Marker-assisted best linear unbiased prediction (MA-BLUP) based on the SNPs in these two genes was used to estimate the breeding values, and the result showed that the highest prediction accuracy of MA-BLUP was increased by 9.4% than traditional BLUP. These results will provide useful information for the marker-assisted breeding in L. vannamei.