The Genetic Foundation of a Newly Identified Sex-Linked Mutant of Chicken Tail
Qiong Wang
,
Department of Animal Genetics and Breeding, National Engineering Laboratory for Animal Breeding, College of Animal Science and Technology, China Agricultural University, Beijing, China
Jinsong Pi
,
Institute of Animal Husbandry and Veterinary Science, Hubei Academy of Agricultural Sciences/Hubei Key Laboratory of Animal Embryonic Engineering and Molecular Breeding, Wuhan, China
Ailuan Pan
,
Institute of Animal Husbandry and Veterinary Science, Hubei Academy of Agricultural Sciences/Hubei Key Laboratory of Animal Embryonic Engineering and Molecular Breeding, Wuhan, China
Jie Shen
,
Institute of Animal Husbandry and Veterinary Science, Hubei Academy of Agricultural Sciences/Hubei Key Laboratory of Animal Embryonic Engineering and Molecular Breeding, Wuhan, China
Lujiang Qu
,
Department of Animal Genetics and Breeding, National Engineering Laboratory for Animal Breeding, College of Animal Science and Technology, China Agricultural University, Beijing, China
Hongshan chicken is an indigenous breed in Hubei Province of China, characterized by yellow beak, shank and feather. There are two distinctly different types of tail traits in Hongshan chicken. Tails of a part of chickens were pendulous, we called them rumplessness, and the others were normal as other chicken breeds. Unlike some types of rumplessness found in other regions, which were caused by the reduction of coccygeal vertebra number, our X-ray examination showed the rumpless individuals of Hongshan chicken possess normal coccygeal vertebra. We speculated that their tail appearance may be effected by the feather development, according to tissue section observation.
To research the genetic mechanism of rumplessness in Hongshan chicken, we have designed some crossing experiments. Results indicated that the rumplessness is a Z-linked dominant character. At the same time, we performed genome-wide association study (GWAS) on 48 rumpless (case) and 48 normal (control) chickens with 600K Affymetrix Axiom Chicken Genotyping Array, to identify the genomic regions responsible for rumplessness. We observed a series of SNPs in gene leucine rich repeat and Ig domain containing 2 (LINGO2) on Z chromosome have significant association with the trait of rumplessness. But this result has not been validated by verification experiment, which was already under way.
We also have obtained resequencing data of two types of Hongshan chicken, some potential structure variations will be detected next.
