DNA methylation variation in the brain of laying hens in relation to differential behavioral patterns

Cell Proliferation in the Adult Chicken Hippocampus Correlates With Individual Differences in Time Spent in Outdoor Areas and Tonic Immobility

“…Standard commercial protocols were followed, including ad-libitum access to food and water. Following on-site rearing [detailed in ( 66 )], 17 weeks old Brown Nick (H&N International) laying hens were transferred to a commercial laying hen house at the Aviforum (Zollikofen, Switzerland). Only one of the barn's two halves was used for the present study, wherein pens were equipped with a system that allowed the tracking of individual animals.…”

“…As missed recordings were distributed evenly over all areas, while the actual times that birds spent outdoors/on the range may have been higher than observed, the proportional times analyzed should not have been affected. Detailed data regarding movement of hens between the barn and external areas is reported elsewhere ( 66 ).…”

Putative Epigenetic Biomarkers of Stress in Red Blood Cells of Chickens Reared Across Different Biomes

“…Epigenetic research has permeated several fields of biological research, from molecular to evolutionary biology ( Richard and Stein, 2012 ). However, despite the importance of epigenetic mechanisms in biology in general, epigenetic studies in production animals are incipient, with some studies performed in chickens ( Pértille et al, 2017a , 2019 ; Bélteky et al, 2018 ; Guerrero-Bosagna et al, 2020 ), in cattle ( Su et al, 2014 ; Fang et al, 2017 ; Zhou et al, 2018 ; Sevane et al, 2019 ), in sheep ( Cao et al, 2017 ; Capra et al, 2017 ; Zhang X. et al, 2017 ; Zhang Y. et al, 2017 ), and pigs ( Gao et al, 2014 ; Choi et al, 2015 ; Yuan et al, 2017 ; Wang and Kadarmideen, 2019 , 2020 ). Among production animals, chickens have recently emerged as a promising model for epigenetic studies ( Frésard et al, 2013 ) following their historical use as a model for translational research with implications for human health and physiology ( Kain et al, 2014 ).…”

GBS-MeDIP: A protocol for parallel identification of genetic and epigenetic variation in the same reduced fraction of genomes across individuals

“…After sequence, the facility makes the data available in .fastq format The bioinformatic pipelines applied to the data obtained from the sequencing facility have been previously reported ( Pértille et al., 2017a ; Pertille et al., 2019 ; Guerrero-Bosagna et al., 2020 ; Pértille et al., 2020 , 2021 ). Note: A barcoding system is originally used in the GBS method ( Poland and Rife, 2012 ), and also in the GBS-MeDIP, which involves the addition of a barcode adapter (in order to identify each one of the individual samples) and a common adapter (suitable for Illumina sequencing) to the individual genomic fragments produced by the PstI digestion.…”