Identifying Genetic Differences Between Dongxiang Blue-Shelled and White Leghorn Chickens Using Sequencing Data

The Dongxiang Blue-shelled chicken is one of the most valuable Chinese indigenous poultry breeds. However, compared to the Italian native White Leghorn, although this Chinese breed possesses numerous favorable characteristics, it also exhibits lower growth performance and fertility. We utilize genotyping sequencing data in this paper obtained via genome reduction on a sequencing platform to detect 100,114 single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) and perform further biological analysis and functional annotation. We employed cross-population extended haplotype homozygosity (XP-EHH), EigenGWAS, and efficient mixed-model association eXpedited (EMMAX) methods to detect areas of the genome which are potential selected regions (PSR) in both chicken breeds, and performed gene ontology (GO) enrichment and quantitative trait loci (QTL) analyses annotating using the Kyoto Encyclopedia of Genes and Genomes (KEGG).The results of this study reveal a total of 2,424 outlier loci (p-value<0.01) of which 2,144 occur in the White Leghorn breed and 280 occur in the Dongxiang Blue-shelled chicken. These correspond to 327 and 94 potentially selected regions containing 297 and 54 genes, respectively. The most significantly selected genes in Blue-shelled chicken are TMEM141 and CLIC3, while the SLCO1B3 gene, related to eggshell color, was identified via EigenGWAS. We show that the White Leghorn genes JARID2, RBMS3, GPC3, TRIB2，ROBO1, SAMSN1, OSBP2 and IGFALS are involved in immunity, reproduction, and growth, and thus might represent footprints of the selection process. In contrast, we identified six significantly enriched pathways in the Dongxiang Blue-shelled chicken that are related to amino acid and lipid metabolism as well as signal transduction. Our results also reveal the presence of a GO term associated with cell metabolism that mainly occurs in the White Leghorn breed, while the most significant QTL regions mapped to the Chicken QTL Database (GG_4.0) for the Dongxiang Blue-shelled breed are predominantly related to lesions, bone mineral content and other related traits compared to tibia length and body weight (i.e. at 14 days, 28 days, 42 days, 70 days) in the White Leghorn. The results of this study highlight differences in growth, immunity and egg quality traits between the two breeds and provide a foundation for the exploration of their genetic mechanisms.

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