Small ruminants, including sheep and goats are natural hosts of
scrapie, and the progression of
scrapie pathogenesis is strongly influenced by polymorphisms in the
prion protein gene (PRNP). Although Korean native goats have been consumed as meat and health food, the evaluation of the susceptibility to
scrapie in these goats has not been performed thus far. Therefore, we investigated the genotype and allele frequencies of PRNP polymorphisms in 211 Korean native goats and compared them with those in
scrapie-affected animals from previous studies. We found a total of 12 single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) including 10 nonsynonymous and 2 synonymous SNPs in Korean native goats. Significant differences in allele frequencies of PRNP
codons 143 and 146 were found between
scrapie-affected goats and Korean native goats (p < 0.01). By contrast, in PRNP
codons 168, 211 and 222, there were no significant differences in the genotype and allele frequencies between
scrapie-affected animals and Korean native goats. To evaluate structural changes caused by nonsynonymous SNPs, PolyPhen-2, PROVEAN and AMYCO analyses were performed. PolyPhen-2 predicted "possibly damaging" for W102G and R154H, "probably damaging" for G127S. AMYCO predicted relatively low for
amyloid propensity of
prion protein in Korean native black goats. This is the first study to evaluate the
scrapie sensitivity and the first in silico evaluation of nonsynonymous SNPs in Korean native black goats.