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Chickens are an ideal model organism for studies in phylogeny, embryology, medicine, and other various areas of scientific research.
Chicken protein is known for having a low degree of fat, a high degree of unsaturated fatty acids and low levels of sodium and cholesterol, which responds to current consumer demand.
Domestic chicken (Gallus gallus domesticus) is one of the main sources of highquality protein for humans
In order to obtain optimal patterns of high quality meat production, great advances have been made in nutrition and management in chickens.
However, a large part of these advances come from the high pressure of selection of animals in genetic improvement programs to obtain optimal rates of:
Ready to sell carcass
Efficiency
Growth
Based on genomic information, the use of molecular techniques has been a fundamental tool to understand genes that control characteristics of commercial interest to improve selection strategies within existing breeding programs.
The use of molecular techniques not only contributes to the improvement of selection, but also to the understanding of the evolutionary history of birds and of the genetic and epigenetic mechanisms involved in this evolutionary process and in the genetic diversification of this species.
This understanding is also important in a humanitarian context to improve the needs of animals and their breeding environments, as current models of large-scale production are questioned in relation to animal health and welfare.
Based on this, our research group in Brazil joined forces in collaboration with a research group in Sweden for the optimisation of molecular techniques to identify markers that will help us understand the genes that control performance and well-being characteristics in chickens.
Next Generation Sequencing (NGS)
In order to understand the molecular mechanisms governing these features of interest, especially in the last decade, high-performance sequencing techniques, also known as second-generation sequencing (NGS, Next Generation Sequencing), emerged.
These methodologies provided a wealth of information that was used to identify both genetic mutation and epigenetic variations through molecular markers called single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) and differential methylation regions in DNA (DMR).
Single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) and differential methylation regions in DNA (DMR) may be responsible ...
