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Identification and Characterization of Candidate DNA Markers Associated with Primary Antibody Response to Sheep Red Blood Cells in Chicken
The improvement of livestock and poultry for natural disease resistance is an important goal in production. There are obvious benefits in identifying and raising animals with strong natural disease resistance including reduced use of antibiotics for general well-being and performance. Here, we report DNA markers segregating for immune response to sheep red blood cells (SRBC, a non-specific molecule) and describe PCR-RFLP methods for genotyping chickens for the informative alleles or SNPs. Additionally, the distribution of the informative SNPs was assessed using seven random-bred populations including 3 non-commercial and 4 commercial. The distribution of the SNPs in the populations that were not directly selected for anti-SRBC provide support that the association with anti-SRBC may not be due to the effect of genetic drift. This study provides methods for future utilization of markers shown to be putatively associated with immune response in the chicken.
Keywords: Antibody response, PCR-RFLP, SNPs, Gallus gallus
