Abstract
BackgroundChangshun green-shell laying hens are unique to Guizhou Province, China, and have high egg quality. Improving egg production performance has become an important breeding task, and in recent years, the development of high-throughput sequencing technology provides a fast and exact method for genetic selection. Therefore, we aimed to use this technology to analyze the differences between the ovarian mRNA transcriptome of low and high-yield Changshun green-shell layer hens, identify critical pathways and candidate genes involved in controlling the egg production rate, and provide basic data for layer breeding.ResultsThe egg production rates of the low egg production group (LP) and the high egg production group (HP) were 68.00 ± 5.56 % and 93.67 ± 7.09 %, with significant differences between the groups (p < 0.01). Moreover, the egg weight, shell thickness, strength and layer weight of the LP were significantly greater than those of the HP (p < 0.05). More than 41 million clean reads per sample were obtained, and more than 90 % of the clean reads were mapped to the Gallus gallus genome. Further analysis identified 142 differentially expressed genes (DEGs), and among them, 55 were upregulated and 87 were downregulated in the ovaries. KEGG pathway enrichment analysis identified 9 significantly enriched pathways, with the neuroactive ligand-receptor interaction pathway being the most enriched. GO enrichment analysis indicated that the GO term transmembrane receptor protein tyrosine kinase activity, and the DEGs identified in this GO term, including PRLR, NRP1, IL15, BANK1, NTRK1, CCK, and HGF may be associated with crucial roles in the regulation of egg production.ConclusionsThe above-mentioned DEGs may be relevant for the molecular breeding of Changshun green-shell laying hens. Moreover, enrichment analysis indicated that the neuroactive ligand-receptor interaction pathway and receptor protein tyrosine kinases may play crucial roles in the regulation of ovarian function and egg production.
Highlights
Chicken eggs are an important food resource for humans as they contain high-quality protein, essential vitamins and minerals, and are inexpensive
At 290 days of age, four high-yield and four low-yield individuals were selected from the batch of laying hens according to their laying rates
The laying rates were significantly higher in the high egg production group (HP) than low egg production group (LP) group (93.67 ± 7.09 vs. 68.00 ± 5.56, p < 0.01)
Summary
Chicken eggs are an important food resource for humans as they contain high-quality protein, essential vitamins and minerals, and are inexpensive. Mishra et al [2] performed RNA-seq to explore the chicken transcriptome in the hypothalamic-pituitaryovarian (HPO) axis Their results showed that 414, 356 and 10 DEGs were identified in the pituitary gland, ovary, and hypothalamus, respectively, between high and low-yielding chickens. Improving egg production performance has become an important breeding task, and in recent years, the development of high-throughput sequencing technology provides a fast and exact method for genetic selection. We aimed to use this technology to analyze the differences between the ovarian mRNA transcriptome of low and high-yield Changshun green-shell layer hens, identify critical pathways and candidate genes involved in controlling the egg production rate, and provide basic data for layer breeding
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