Genome-Wide Association Study Identifies SNPs Associated with Nutritional Quality Traits in Sea Cucumber

While GWAS analyses have seen limited application in sea cucumber research, recent studies have used this approach to investigate economic traits like gender determination and spine characteristics. This study employed a mixed linear model with Bonferroni correction to establish a significance threshold and identify multiple SNPs correlated with nutritional quality traits in sea cucumber. Notably, our analysis did not detect associations between these nutritional traits and key enzymes involved in sea cucumber saponin synthesis, including LAS, CYP, and UGT, despite these enzymes being previously confirmed as influential in other studies.