Differentital Gene Expression in Abdominal and Cardiac Adipose Tissue in the Broiler Chicken

Adipose tissue is the major storage depot for lipids until they are utilized as a source of energy. Many organs rely on lipids as their primary energy source, such as the heart. Lipids and fatty acids are also used as the primary energy source for the body when glucose supplies are inadequate. There are two main fat pads in the chicken, the cardiac and abdominal fat pad. Hypotheses generated are that the cardiac adipose acts as a buffer for the heart to save it from lipid toxicity, the cardiac adipose functions as a mechanical cushion for the heart, and the abdominal adipose is the primary source of lipid storage. Transcriptome libraries were prepared from market age broiler chicken abdominal and cardiac adipose samples with the following procedure: 1. Isolation of mRNA using mirVana™ miRNA Kit, 2. Verification of mRNA quality and integrity by Fragment Analysis, 3. Transcriptome libraries prepared using Illumina Stranded RNA Prep Kit and sequenced at the Delaware Biotechnology Institute Core Sequencing Facility, 4. Transcription levels determined using an in house pipeline, and 5. Performance of a Relative Tissue Expression (RTE) analysis, to identify genes unique to each type of adipose tissue compared to the rest of the body, data analysis using JMP Pro11 and various bioinformatics tools. The current effort is to see how the enriched genes in each type of adipose tissue relate to their unique functioning and to identify which pathways they are involved in.

Acknowledgements: This material is based upon work supported by the National Science Foundation under Grant No. 1147029 and by the Agriculture and Food Research Initiative Competitive Grant No. by NIFA 2010-04233 from the USDA National Institute of Food and Agriculture.