Biodiversity of 52 chicken populations assessed by microsatellite typing of DNA pools

Abstract

-In a project on the biodiversity of chickens funded by the European Commission (EC), eight laboratories collaborated to assess the genetic variation within and between 52 populations from a wide range of chicken types. Twenty-two di-nucleotide microsatellite markers were used to genotype DNA pools of 50 birds from each population. The polymorphism measures for the average, the least polymorphic population (inbred C line) and the most polymorphic population (Gallus gallus spadiceus) were, respectively, as follows: number of alleles per locus, per population: 3.5, 1.3 and 5.2; average gene diversity across markers: 0.47, 0.05 and 0.64; and proportion of polymorphic markers: 0.91, 0.25 and 1.0. These were in good agreement with the breeding history of the populations. For instance, unselected populations were found to be more polymorphic than selected breeds such as layers. Thus DNA pools are effective in the preliminary assessment of genetic variation of populations and markers. Mean genetic distance indicates the extent to which a given population shares its genetic diversity with that of the whole tested gene pool and is a useful criterion for conservation of diversity. The distribution of populationspecific (private) alleles and the amount of genetic variation shared among populations supports the hypothesis that the red jungle fowl is the main progenitor of the domesticated chicken.genetic distance / polymorphism / red jungle fowl / DNA markers / domesticated chicken

Genotypic characterization of ten microsatellite loci in two Brazilian free range (Caipira) chicken lines

“…Lower values than the results found in this study were also described by AL-QAMASHOUI et al (2014) - 8.4 (VANHALA et al, 1998;KYSER et al, 2000;ZHANG et al, 2002;HILLEL et al, 2003;TADANO et al, 2007;BERTHOULY et al, 2008;ROSÁRIO et al, 2009;CHATTERJEE et al, 2010;TADANO et al, 2012;WILKINSON et al, 2012). Normally, it is expected that the genetic variability of commercial chickens lines had been reduced because they are selected for quantitative traits (HILLEL et al, 2003). However the average number of alleles to PP and RN lines, especially when compared to commercial birds, indicates that there were no lost in the genetic variability in the raise of these lines, originally found in their free range chickens ancestors.…”

“…CLEMENTINO et al (2010) andFONTEQUE et al (2014) found an average number of 9.6 and 12.4 alleles per locus, respectively, in studies with microsatellites in free range chickens from Brazil. Lower values than the results found in this study were also described by AL-QAMASHOUI et al (2014) - 8.4 (VANHALA et al, 1998;KYSER et al, 2000;ZHANG et al, 2002;HILLEL et al, 2003;TADANO et al, 2007;BERTHOULY et al, 2008;ROSÁRIO et al, 2009;CHATTERJEE et al, 2010;TADANO et al, 2012;WILKINSON et al, 2012). Normally, it is expected that the genetic variability of commercial chickens lines had been reduced because they are selected for quantitative traits (HILLEL et al, 2003).…”

Phylogeography and origin of Chinese domestic chicken

“…Local chicken breeds are resilient to harsh environmental conditions, are bred for disease resistance and are easy to raise (Pinard- Van Der Laan et al, 1998). The origin of modern domestic chicken has been well investigated during the last decade (Berthouly et al, 2008;Granevitze et al, 2007;Hillel et al, 2003;Muchadeyi et al, 2007;Pinard-Van Der Laan et al, 1998). In this paper, we conducted an mtDNA control region sequences polymorphism analysis in Jiangxi, China.…”

Genetic characterization of local Italian breeds of chickens undergoing in situ conservation

“…Among molecular markers, microsatellites were preferred because they are well dis-persed in the genome and highly polymorphic (Cheng et al, 1995). They have been used in many countries to study the genetic relationships among local breeds (Takahashi et al, 1998;Hillel et al, 2003;Baumung et al, 2004;Muchadeyi et al, 2007;Dalvit et al, 2009), and their use allows meta-analysis and comparisons among independent research units.…”