Identification of differentially expressed genes associated with egg production in black-boned chicken

ABSTRACT

1. Muchuan black-bone chicken is well known in China for its meat quality and medicinal properties; however, its egg-laying performance is not ideal. To better understand the molecular mechanisms of black-boned chicken egg-laying, high-throughput RNA sequencing was performed to compare differences in the pituitary transcriptome between three high-rate (group H) and three low-rate (group L) egg production chickens.

2. In total, 171 differentially expressed genes (DEGs) were identified between the two groups, of which 113 were upregulated and 58 were downregulated in group L. Some of these genes are known to be related to hormone secretion or the regulation of reproductive processes; these include prolactin-releasing hormone (PRLH), distal-less homeobox 6 (DLX6), interferon regulatory factor 4 (IRF4), and cilia and flagella associated protein 69 (CFAP69). Notably, expression pattern analysis indicated that both PRLH and DLX6 may influence egg-laying performance.

3. The dataset provided a foundation for discovering important genes and pathways involved in the chicken egg-laying process, and may help to improve understanding of the molecular mechanisms of chicken reproduction.

KEYWORDS:

• Chicken
• egg-laying
• pituitary
• transcriptome
• PRLH

Disclosure Statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Supplementary Material

Supplementary material for this article can be accessed here.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by Sichuan Science and Technology Program [2018JY0452] [19YYJC0367]. This work was also funded by Scientific Research Plan Projects of Locality and University Cooperation of Leshan Normal University [HX170068], and the Scientific Research Project by Leshan Normal University [ZZ201813].