Systemic Transcriptome Responses to Heat Stress in the Chicken

Heat stress has a significant deleterious impact on chicken production in the United States. As climate changes and the duration and severity of heat waves increase the impact on production is likely to become more severe. One means to ameliorate this effect of heat stress could be to select for alleles that improve the ability of chickens to withstand hyperthermia. As a means to identify potential candidate genes that could be associated with resilience to heat stress, we have examined the chicken’s transcriptome response to thermal challenge. Chickens were exposed to cyclic heat stress (35^oC) for 8 hours per day for 7 days. After the 8 hours, the temperature was reduced to thermoneutral (25^oC). Control birds were maintained at 25^oC throughout the course of the trial. At the end of one week, necropsies were performed and tissues isolated from both treated and control birds. Transcriptome libraries were prepared from multiple tissues including: liver, kidney, spleen, pituitary, hypothalamus and heart. Data analysis identifies both common and tissue unique responses of these different tissues to heat stress.