Chicken pituitary transcriptomic responses to acute heat stress

Abstract

Background Poultry production is vulnerable to increasing temperatures in terms of animal welfare and in economic losses. With the predicted increase in global temperature and the number and severity of heat waves, it is important to understand how chickens raised for food respond to heat stress. This knowledge can be used to determine how to select chickens that are adapted to thermal challenge. As neuroendocrine organs, the hypothalamus and pituitary provide systemic regulation of the heat stress response. Methods and Results Here we report a transcriptome analysis of the pituitary response to acute heat stress. Chickens were stressed for 2 h at 35 °C (HS) and transcriptomes compared with birds maintained in thermoneutral temperatures (25 °C). Conclusions The observations were evaluated in the context of ontology terms and pathways to describe the pituitary response to heat stress. The pituitaries of heat stressed birds exhibited responses to hyperthermia through altered expression of genes coding for chaperones, cell cycle regulators, cholesterol synthesis, transcription factors, along with the secreted peptide hormones, prolactin, and proopiomelanocortin.

Genomic regions, candidate genes, and pleiotropic variants associated with physiological and anatomical indicators of heat stress response in lactating sows

“…ZMYND11 , a multidomain protein, modulates RNA polymerase activity and regulates splicing. This gene was differentially regulated in response to thermal stress in sockeye and pink salmon [ 92 ] and in chicken pituitary under heat stress [ 93 ]. ZMYND11 has been associated with neurodevelopmental disorders, global developmental delay, seizures, and hypotonia, and it is a potential causative gene in complex neurodevelopmental phenotypes [ 94 – 96 ].…”

Composting: A biosecurity measure to maximize the benefit of broilers̕ litter

“…The researchers investigated the bacterial growth response, gene expression responses, and transcriptomic analysis of heat stress responses at 42°C as being representative of conditions associated with live poultry body temperature. Moreover, there is limited knowledge concerning the effects of higher intermediate nonlethal temperatures that bacteria might encounter during postharvest processing [ 13 ].…”