DNA Polymorphism and Nucleotide Sequence Analysis of Growth Hormone Gene and its Relationship with Body Weight in Meat Type of Chicken

The growth hormone gene is a candidate gene controlling the metabolic and physiologic actions. Blood and feather samples were collected from 200 individuals of birds and genomic DNA was extracted using salting out technique. DNA fragment with 776 bp at growth hormone gene was amplified using polymerase chin reaction (PCR).The products from each strain (New Genotype, Punjabi Broiler-2, Indian Curnish-3 and University Male Line) were digested with MspI.. In total, four RFLP pattern were observed. The genotypic frequencies obtained for different strains were tested using chi-square test. The differences among genotypes for all the four strains were found to be significant. The overall allele frequency for A, B and C alleles were 0.495, 0.110 and 0.395 respectively. Correlation of cGH/MspI patterns with 6^thweek body weight was estimated. There were significant (P<0.05) differences among four strains for body weight. Nucleotide sequencing of the amplified fragment of GH gene of four strains were done and submitted to the NCBI Genbank (accession nos JN403372 and JN403373). The nucleotide sequence analysis indicated that the percent similarity of GH gene fragment of four strains were more than 99%. In this study result also shows that there is a scope for using growth hormone gene as a candidate gene for growth traits.

Key words: cGH gene, Polymorphism, PCR-RFLP, Sequencing, Body weight