Potential Driver Mutations for Marek’s Disease

Marek’s disease (MD), a lymphoproliferative disease of chickens caused by the highly pathogenic Marek’s disease virus (MDV) is the most serious chronic disease problem that costs the worldwide poultry industry $1-2 billion per year. In addition to its agronomic relevance, MD is a valuable biomedical model for viral-induced transformation. MDV Meq is a bZIP transcription factor that is necessary but not sufficient for the induction of lymphomas. To address whether genomic alterations are necessary for MDV-induced transformation, 26 MD tumors have been both DNA and RNA sequenced to identify somatic mutations. Currently progress of this effort will be discussed. The resulting information combined with ongoing experiments should result in a significant increase in knowledge on how MD vaccines protect birds as well as genes and genetic markers for genomic selection for enhanced MD genetic resistance in commercial flocks.