BackgroundFeed cost constitutes about 70% of the cost of raising broilers, but the efficiency of feed utilization has not kept up the growth potential of today's broilers. Improvement in feed efficiency would reduce the amount of feed required for growth, the production cost and the amount of nitrogenous waste. We studied residual feed intake (RFI) and feed conversion ratio (FCR) over two age periods to delineate their genetic inter-relationships.MethodsWe used an animal model combined with Gibb sampling to estimate genetic parameters in a pedigreed random mating broiler control population.ResultsHeritability of RFI and FCR was 0.42-0.45. Thus selection on RFI was expected to improve feed efficiency and subsequently reduce feed intake (FI). Whereas the genetic correlation between RFI and body weight gain (BWG) at days 28-35 was moderately positive, it was negligible at days 35-42. Therefore, the timing of selection for RFI will influence the expected response. Selection for improved RFI at days 28-35 will reduce FI, but also increase growth rate. However, selection for improved RFI at days 35-42 will reduce FI without any significant change in growth rate. The nature of the pleiotropic relationship between RFI and FCR may be dependent on age, and consequently the molecular factors that govern RFI and FCR may also depend on stage of development, or on the nature of resource allocation of FI above maintenance directed towards protein accretion and fat deposition. The insignificant genetic correlation between RFI and BWG at days 35-42 demonstrates the independence of RFI on the level of production, thereby making it possible to study the molecular, physiological and nutrient digestibility mechanisms underlying RFI without the confounding effects of growth. The heritability estimate of FCR was 0.49 and 0.41 for days 28-35 and days 35-42, respectively.ConclusionSelection for FCR will improve efficiency of feed utilization but because of the genetic dependence of FCR and its components, selection based on FCR will reduce FI and increase growth rate. However, the correlated responses in both FI and BWG cannot be predicted accurately because of the inherent problem of FCR being a ratio trait.

MicroRNAs (miRNAs) are small noncoding RNAs that regulate gene expressions by targeting the mRNAs especially in the 3′UTR regions. The identification of miRNAs has been done by biological experiment and computational prediction. The computational prediction approach has been done using two major methods: comparative and noncomparative. The comparative method is dependent on the conservation of the miRNA sequences and secondary structure. The noncomparative method, on the other hand, does not rely on conservation. We hypothesized that each miRNA class has its own unique set of features; therefore, grouping miRNA by classes before using them as training data will improve sensitivity and specificity. The average sensitivity was 88.62% for miR-Explore, which relies on within miRNA class alignment, and 70.82% for miR-abela, which relies on global alignment. Compared with global alignment, grouping miRNA by classes yields a better sensitivity with very high specificity for pre-miRNA prediction even when a simple positional based secondary and primary structure alignment are used.