Effect of Feeding Conditions on the Methylation Status of Fatp1 Gene in Chicken Breast Muscle

Abstract

The objective of this work was to investigate the effect of feeding conditions on methylation status of FATP1 gene, which is an important candidate gene of Intramuscular fat and important indicator of chicken meat quality. We selected Daninghe (DNH) and Qingjiaoma (QJM) chickens under scatter-feeding and captivity-feeding conditions as experimental animals, and detected the methylation status of FATP1 genes in chicken breast muscle using Bisulfite Sequencing PCR method. The results showed that the methylation level of FATP1 in scatter-fed chicken was lower than in captivity-fed conditions in DNH and QIM chicken breast tissues; DNA methylation in the promoter and exon1 region was demonstrated to negatively regulate the expression of the FATP1 gene. These results suggested that feeding conditions affect the methylation status and expression level of FATP1, thereby affecting the Intramuscular fat content in DNH and QJM chicken breast muscle.

Impacts of Epigenetic Processes on the Health and Productivity of Livestock

“…Further research indicated that DNA methylation affected the intramuscular fat deposition by regulating the expression of some key genes, such as ABCA1 , COL6A1 , and GSTT1L ( Zhang M. et al, 2017 , Zhang et al, 2020 ). Moreover, different breeds or feed condition significantly affected the methylation levels of UCP3 and FATP1 genes in chicken breast muscle, which enhanced the reliability of these genes as important candidate genes of intramuscular fat deposition in chicken meat ( Gao et al, 2015 , 2017 ). The alterations of epigenetic markers in relation to livestock products (milk, meat, egg, and wool) are summarized in Table 2 .…”