Genomic regions associated with the sex-linked inhibitor of dermal melanin in Silkie chicken

Abstract

A unique characteristic of the Silkie chicken is its fibromelanosis phenotype. The dermal layer of its skin, its connective tissue and shank dermis are hyperpigmented. This dermal hyperpigmentation phenotype is controlled by the sex-linked inhibitor of dermal melanin gene (ID) and the dominant fibromelanosis allele. This study attempted to confirm the genomic region associated with ID. By genotyping, ID was found to be closely linked to the region between GGA_rs16127903 and GGA_rs14685542 (8406919 bp) on chromosome Z, which contains ten functional genes. The expression of these genes was characterized in the embryo and 4 days after hatching and it was concluded that MTAP, encoding methylthioadenosinephosphorylase, would be the most likely candidate gene. Finally, target DNA capture and sequence analysis was performed, but no specific SNP(s) was found in the targeted region of the Silkie genome. Further work is necessary to identify the causal ID mutation located on chromosome Z.

Keywords

sex-linked inhibitor of dermal melanin (Id) / Silkie / chromosome Z

References

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Acknowledgements

We are grateful to the Guangzhou Academy of Agricultural Sciences, Jiangsu Institute of Poultry Sciences and their members who provided samples, Dr. Zhe Yang (Agilent Technologies) for assistance with the array design, BerryGenomics Company for performing IlluminaSolexa sequencing and Dr. Yujun Zhang (Bioyong Tech) for assistance with data analysis. This work was funded by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (U0831003) and the National Advanced Technology Research and Development Program of China (2011AA100301).

Supplementary material

The online version of this article at http://dx.doi.org/(doi:10.15302/J-FASE-2014018) contains supplementary material (Appendix A and Appendix B).

Compliance with ethics guidelines

Ming Tian, Rui Hao, Suyun Fang, Yanqiang Wang, Xiaorong Gu, Chungang Feng, Xiaoxiang Hu and Ning Li declare that they have no conflict of interest or financial conflicts to disclose. All applicable institutional and national guidelines for the care and use of animals were followed.

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Higher Education Press and Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg