Genome-wide Association Study of Chicken Plumage Pigmentation

• Main Authors: Mi Na Park, Jin Ae Choi, Kyung-Tai Lee, Hyun-Jeong Lee, Bong-Hwan Choi, Heebal Kim, Tae-Hun Kim, Seoae Cho, Taeheon Lee
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Published: Asian-Australasian Association of Animal Production Societies 2013-11-01
• Series: Asian-Australasian Journal of Animal Sciences
• Subjects: Chicken; Plumage Pigmentation; Genome-wide Association Study
• Online Access: http://www.ajas.info/upload/pdf/ajas-26-11-1523-3.pdf

To increase plumage color uniformity and understand the genetic background of Korean chickens, we performed a genome-wide association study of different plumage color in Korean native chickens. We analyzed 60K SNP chips on 279 chickens with GEMMA methods for GWAS and estimated the genetic heritability for plumage color. The estimated heritability suggests that plumage coloration is a polygenic trait. We found new loci associated with feather pigmentation at the genome-wide level and from the results infer that there are additional genetic effect for plumage color. The results will be used for selecting and breeding chicken for plumage color uniformity.