Digital Gene Expression (DGE) Analysis of Nutritional Pancreatic Atrophy of Chicks Induced by the Se/Vitamin E Deficiencies

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Nutritional pancreatic atrophy (NPA) is a classical Se/vitamin E deficiency disease of chicks. We previously determined responses of mRNA abundances of 25 selenoprotein genes in various tissues of chicks to the deficiencies of these two nutrients. The present DGE analysis was performed to reveal effects of dietary Se/vitamin E deficiencies on the pancreatic transcriptome of chicks and to identify global gene association with the NPA. We fed 4 groups of day‐old broiler chicks (n = 40/group) with a corn‐soy basal diet (BD: 10 μg Se/kg, no vitamin E added), the BD plus all‐rac‐a‐tocopheryl acetate at 50 mg/kg, Se (as sodium selenite) at 0.3 mg/kg, or both of these nutrients for 6 wk. High incidences of NPA (70%) and mortality (35%) of chicks were induced by BD, starting at wk 3. Both NPA incidences and mortality were prevented by dietary Se supplementation. On day 18, chicks were killed to collect pancreases for the DGE analysis. Pancreatic RNA samples were pooled from five individual chicks into each of the four dietary groups, respectively. Dietary Se deficiency altered expression of 884 unigenes, with 360 unigenes up‐regulated and 524 unigenes down‐regulated. Of the differentially expressed genes, 530 unigenes were annotated and 65 were classified into metabolism pathways. Real‐time PCR analyses of selected four unigenes related to selenocompound metabolic and apoptotic pathways showed consistent results with those obtained from the DGE analysis, which confirms the quality of the sequencing data for further gene expression characterization. In conclusion, our pancreatic transcriptiom data of the chicks fed the four experimental diets will facilliate mechanistic investigation on the pathogenesis of NPA induced by the dietary Se/vitamin E deficiencies.Support or Funding Information(This research is supported in part by a NSFC grant #31320103920).