title: Next-Generation Sequencing Techniques Reveal that Genomic Imprinting Is Absent in Day-Old Gallus gallus domesticus Brains.
abstract: Genomic imprinting is a phenomenon characterized by parent-of-origin-specific gene expression. While widely documented in viviparous mammals and plants, imprinting in oviparous birds remains controversial. Because genomic imprinting is temporal- and tissue-specific, we investigated this phenomenon only in the brain tissues of 1-day-old chickens (Gallus gallus). We used next-generation sequencing technology to compare four transcriptomes pooled from 11 chickens, generated from reciprocally crossed families, to the DNA sequences of their parents. Candidate imprinted genes were then selected from these sequence alignments and subjected to verification experiments that excluded all but one SNP. Subsequent experiments performed with two new sets of reciprocally crossed families resulted in the exclusion of that candidate SNP as well. Attempts to find evidence of genomic imprinting from long non-coding RNAs yielded negative results. We therefore conclude that genomic imprinting is absent in the brains of 1-day-old chickens. However, due to the temporal and tissue specificity of imprinting, our results cannot be extended to all growth stages and tissue types.
authors.affiliation: Department of Animal Genetics and Breeding, National Engineering Laboratory for Animal Breeding, College of Animal Science and Technology, China Agricultural University, Beijing, China.
authors.forename: Qiong
authors.initials: Q
authors.lastname: Wang
authors.affiliation: Department of Animal Genetics and Breeding, National Engineering Laboratory for Animal Breeding, College of Animal Science and Technology, China Agricultural University, Beijing, China.
authors.forename: Kaiyang
authors.initials: K
authors.lastname: Li
authors.affiliation: Department of Animal Genetics and Breeding, National Engineering Laboratory for Animal Breeding, College of Animal Science and Technology, China Agricultural University, Beijing, China.
authors.forename: Daixi
authors.initials: D
authors.lastname: Zhang
authors.affiliation: Department of Animal Genetics and Breeding, National Engineering Laboratory for Animal Breeding, College of Animal Science and Technology, China Agricultural University, Beijing, China.
authors.forename: Junying
authors.initials: J
authors.lastname: Li
authors.affiliation: Department of Animal Genetics and Breeding, National Engineering Laboratory for Animal Breeding, College of Animal Science and Technology, China Agricultural University, Beijing, China.
authors.forename: Guiyun
authors.initials: G
authors.lastname: Xu
authors.affiliation: Department of Animal Genetics and Breeding, National Engineering Laboratory for Animal Breeding, College of Animal Science and Technology, China Agricultural University, Beijing, China.
authors.forename: Jiangxia
authors.initials: J
authors.lastname: Zheng
authors.affiliation: Department of Animal Genetics and Breeding, National Engineering Laboratory for Animal Breeding, College of Animal Science and Technology, China Agricultural University, Beijing, China.
authors.forename: Ning
authors.initials: N
authors.lastname: Yang
authors.affiliation: Department of Animal Genetics and Breeding, National Engineering Laboratory for Animal Breeding, College of Animal Science and Technology, China Agricultural University, Beijing, China.
authors.forename: Lujiang
authors.initials: L
authors.lastname: Qu
mesh_terms: D000818:Animals; D001921:Brain / Q000378:metabolism*; D002645:Chickens / Q000235:genetics*; D019295:Computational Biology; D003433:Crosses, Genetic; D005260:Female; D056726:Genetic Association Studies; D056426:Genetic Loci; D018392:Genomic Imprinting; D059014:High-Throughput Nucleotide Sequencing / Q000379:methods*; D008297:Male; D020641:Polymorphism, Single Nucleotide / Q000235:genetics; D015203:Reproducibility of Results; D017423:Sequence Analysis, RNA