Transcriptional Profiling of the Anterior Pituitary Gland of Genetically Selected Fat and Lean Chickens

ABSTRACT: Chickens divergently selected for either high abdominal fat content (fat genotype) or low abdominal fat content (lean genotype) at SRA-INRA, France were used to profile pituitary gland gene expression during juvenile development (1 to 7 weeks of age) and to identify differentially expressed genes associated with genotype and age. The fat line (FL) and lean line (LL) chickens are different in various phenotypic and metabolic measurements, including abdominal fatness, plasma glycemia, and T3. The FL and LL chickens represent unique models for characterizing biomedical and agricultural traits. The Del-Mar 14K Chicken Integrated Systems microarrays were used for a transcriptional scan in the pituitary gland during juvenile development using a reference design for the hybridization of total RNA from the pituitary gland. A reference RNA pool was made from an equal amount of high-quality total RNA extracted from all of the samples. Each of the microarrays was co-hybridized with Cy3-labeled cDNA targets from one of the pituitary samples and Cy5-labled cDNA targets from the reference pituitary RNA pool. Log2-transformed fluorescence intensities were analyzed with a mixed model. Two-way ANOVA (SAS) of log2 ratios was used to detect significant (p<0.05) differences by line, age, and the line-by-age interaction. There were 1150 significantly different genes between the two lines, and 339 of these genes exhibited greater than 0.68-fold differences in their log2 ratios (highest group mean at least 160% of the lowest group mean). One thousand four hundred twenty nine genes were significantly different by age and of these, 583 exhibited fold changes greater than 0.68 in the log2 ratio. There were 145 genes that significantly differed in their line-by-age interaction, and 62 of these exhibited greater than 0.68-fold differences. There were 386 genes with significant differences by line or for line-by-age interaction with at least a 0.68-fold change in log2 ratio and n ≥ 2 for each experimental group. Four biological replicates were analyzed, each consisting of a complete set of individual samples from pituitary glands of Fat and Lean line chickens at week 1, week 3, week 5, or week 7 of age. Amplified antisense RNA from each sample was analyzed using Del-Mar 14 K array in a reference design. Each experimental sample (Fat and Lean Weeks 1, 3, 5, and 7) was labeled with Cy3 and hybridized with an aliquot of the Cy5 reference pool, which was generated from all 32 RNA samples.

ORGANISM(S): Gallus gallus

SUBMITTER: Tom Porter 

PROVIDER: E-GEOD-26584 | biostudies-arrayexpress |

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-arrayexpress