Many countries have implemented genetic evaluation for fertility traits in recent years. In particular, reproductive trait is a complex trait and need to require a system-level approach for identifying candidate genes related to the trait. To find the candidate gene associated with reproductive trait, we applied a weighted gene co-expression network ana-lysis from expression value of bovine genes. We identified three co-expressed modules associated with reproductive trait from bovine microarray data. Hub genes (ZP4, FHL2 and EGR4) were determined in each module; they were topologically centered with statistically significant value in the gene co-expression network. We were able to find the highly co-expressed gene pairs with a correlation coefficient. Finally, the crucial functions of co-expressed modules were reported from functional enrichment analysis. We suggest that the network-based approach in livestock may an important method for analyzing the complex effects of candidate genes associated with economic traits like repro-duction.

• Dajeong Lim(Division of Animal Genomics and Bioinformatics, National Institute of Animal Science, RDA) Corresponding author
• Yong-Min Cho(Division of Animal Genomics and Bioinformatics, National Institute of Animal Science, RDA)
• Seung-Hwan Lee(Hanwoo Experiment Station, National Institute of Animal Science, RDA)
• Han-Ha Chai(Division of Animal Genomics and Bioinformatics, National Institute of Animal Science, RDA)
• Tae-Hun Kim(Division of Animal Genomics and Bioinformatics, National Institute of Animal Science, RDA)