Integrated Transcriptomics Profiling in Chahua and Digao Chickens' Breast for Assessment Molecular Mechanism of Meat Quality Traits

Mohammed Abdulwahid Alsoufi; Yong Liu; Changwei Cao; Jinbo Zhao; Jiajia Kang; Mengyuan Li; Kun Wang; Yang He; Changrong Ge

doi:10.3390/genes14010095

Integrated Transcriptomics Profiling in Chahua and Digao Chickens' Breast for Assessment Molecular Mechanism of Meat Quality Traits

Genes (Basel). 2022 Dec 28;14(1):95. doi: 10.3390/genes14010095.

Authors

Mohammed Abdulwahid Alsoufi^{1

2}, Yong Liu¹, Changwei Cao³, Jinbo Zhao¹, Jiajia Kang¹, Mengyuan Li¹, Kun Wang¹, Yang He¹, Changrong Ge¹

Affiliations

¹ College of Animal Science and Technology, Yunnan Agricultural University, Kunming 650201, China.
² Department of Animal Production, Faculty of Agriculture, Sana'a University, Alwehdah Street, Sana'a P.O. Box 19509, Yemen.
³ Department of Food Science and Engineering, College of Biological Sciences, Southwest Forestry University, Kunming 650224, China.

Abstract

Meat quality traits are an important economic trait and remain a major argument, from the producer to the consumer. However, there are a few candidate genes and pathways of chicken meat quality traits that were reported for chicken molecular breeding. The purpose of the present study is to identify the candidate genes and pathways associated with meat quality underlying variations in meat quality. Hence, transcriptome profiles of breast tissue in commercial Digao (DG, 5 male) and Chahua (CH, 5 male) native chicken breeds were analyzed at the age of 100 days. The results found 3525 differentially expressed genes (DEGs) in CH compared to DG with adjusted p-values of ≤0.05 and log2FC ≥ 0.1 FDR ≤ 0.05. Functional analysis of GO showed that the DEGs are mainly involved in the two types of processes of meat quality, such as positive regulation of the metabolic process, extracellular structure organization, collagen trimer, cellular amino acid metabolic process, cellular amino acid catabolic process, and heme binding. Functional analysis of KEGG showed that the DEGs are mainly involved in the two types of processes of meat quality, such as oxidative phosphorylation, carbon metabolism, valine, leucine, and isoleucine degradation, and fatty acid degradation. Many of the DEGs are well known to be related to meat quality, such as COL28A1, COL1A2, MB, HBAD, HBA1, ACACA, ACADL, ACSL1, ATP8A1, CAV1, FADS2, FASN, DCN, CHCHD10, AGXT2, ALDH3A2, and MORN4. Therefore, the current study detected multiple pathways and genes that could be involved in the control of the meat quality traits of chickens. These findings should be used as an essential resource to improve the accuracy of selection for meat traits in chickens using marker-assisted selection based on differentially expressed genes.

Keywords: Chahua chicken; Digao broiler chicken; breast muscle; meat quality traits; pathways and genes; transcriptomics.

Publication types

Research Support, Non-U.S. Gov't

MeSH terms

Amino Acids / genetics
Animals
Chickens* / genetics
Chickens* / metabolism
Male
Meat / analysis
Transcriptome* / genetics

Substances

Collagen Type I, alpha2 Subunit
Amino Acids

Grants and funding

This research was funded by the Major Science and Technology Project of Joint Funds of the National Natural Science Foundation of China (U2002205), Yunnan XichouBlack Bone Chicken Industry Science and Technology Mission (202104BI090020), the Yunnan SuZhengchang Expert Workstation (20149IC008) and Yunnan Broiler Seed Industry Technology Innovation Center Construction and Industrialization Key Technology Research and Application Demonstration (202102AE090040).