Messenger RNA sequencing and pathway analysis provide novel insights into the biological basis of chickens' feed efficiency.

ABSTRACT:

Background

Advanced selection technologies have been developed and continually optimized to improve traits of agricultural importance; however, these methods have been primarily applied without knowledge of underlying biological changes that may be induced by selection. This study aims to characterize the biological basis of differences between chickens with low and high feed efficiency (FE) with a long-term goal of improving the ability to select for FE.

Results

High-throughput RNA sequencing was performed on 23 breast muscle samples from commercial broiler chickens with extremely high (n = 10) and low (n = 13) FE. An average of 34 million paired-end reads (75 bp) were produced for each sample, 80% of which were properly mapped to the chicken reference genome (Ensembl Galga

SUBMITTER: Zhou N 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC4414306 | biostudies-literature | 2015 Mar

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature