Project description:Domestic chicken has been intensively studied because of its role as an efficient source of lean meat. However, commercial broilers resulting from genetic selection for rapid growth demonstrate detrimental traits, such as excess deposition of abdominal adipose tissue, metabolic disorders, and reduced reproduction. Therefore fast-growing broilers represent “obese” chickens compared to slow-growing egg layers (e.g, Leghorn) or wild strain of meat-type chickens (e.g., Fayoumi). Fayoumi chickens, originating from Egypt, represent a harder stain of chickens, which are more resistant to diseases. Leghorn chickens are the original breed of commercial U.S layers. Both lines were maintained highly inbred by Iowa State University poultry geneticists with an inbreeding coefficient higher than 0.95. Both Fayoumi and Leghorn demonstrated lean phenotype compared to broilers, and these three lines of chickens are genetically distant from each other. In this study, we used affymetrix microarray to profile global gene expression of three distinct genetic lines of chickens to identify functional pathways associated with leanness of domestic chickens.
Project description:Domestic chicken has been intensively studied because of its role as an efficient source of lean meat. However, commercial broilers resulting from genetic selection for rapid growth demonstrate detrimental traits, such as excess deposition of abdominal adipose tissue, metabolic disorders, and reduced reproduction. Therefore fast-growing broilers represent “obese” chickens compared to slow-growing egg layers (e.g, Leghorn) or wild strain of meat-type chickens (e.g., Fayoumi). Fayoumi chickens, originating from Egypt, represent a harder stain of chickens, which are more resistant to diseases. Leghorn chickens are the original breed of commercial U.S layers. Both lines were maintained highly inbred by Iowa State University poultry geneticists with an inbreeding coefficient higher than 0.95. Both Fayoumi and Leghorn demonstrated lean phenotype compared to broilers, and these three lines of chickens are genetically distant from each other.