Genetic diversity and population structure of indigenous chicken breeds in South China

Abstract

A total of 587 individuals from 12 indigenous chicken breeds from South China and two commercial breeds were genotyped for 26 microsatellites to investigate the genetic diversity and population structure. All microsatellites were found to be polymorphic. The number of alleles per locus ranged from 5 to 36, with an average of 12.10 ± 7.00 (SE). All breeds, except White Recessive Rock, had high allelic polymorphism (>0.5). Higher genetic diversity was revealed in the indigenous chicken breeds rather than in the commercial breeds. Potential introgression from the commercial breeds into the indigenous chickens was also detected. The population structure of these indigenous chicken breeds could be explained by their geographical distribution, which suggested the presence of independent history of breed formation. Data generated in this study will provide valuable information to the conservation for indigenous chicken breeds in future.

Keywords

microsatellites / genetic diversity / population structure / indigenous chicken / South China / conservation

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Acknowledgements

We sincerely thank Zhiguan ZOU and Shaofeng LIU for providing HY and GX samples, respectively, and Kunfeng Tan of Jiaying University for experimental assistance. We also thank Dr. Minsheng PENG of Kunming Institute of Zoology, Chinese Academy of Sciences for constructive comments on the manuscript. This research was supported by Guangdong Natural Science Foundation (2014A030307018), Innovation and strong school project of Jiaying University (CQX019), Outstanding Young Teacher Training Program of Colleges and Universities in Guangdong Province (Yq2013152), Science and Technology Planning Project of Guangdong Province (2015A020208020, 2016A030303068).

Supplementary materials

The online version of this article at http://dx. doi.org/10.15302/J-FASE-2016102 contains supplementary materials (Appendixes A and B).

Compliance with ethics guidelines

Xunhe Huang, Jinfeng Zhang, Danlin He, Xiquan Zhang, Fusheng Zhong, Weina Li, Qingmei Zheng, Jiebo Chen, and Bingwang Du 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.

RIGHTS & PERMISSIONS

The Author(s) 2016. Published by Higher Education Press. This is an open access article under the CC BY license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0)