Project description:Hatchability is one of the important reproductive traits of poulty, however, molecular biological study related to hatchability of poultry is very limited. The magnum is where the egg white components are produced. During embryo development, egg white secreted by the magnum is gradually transferred into the amniotic fluid, and albumen finally migrates to the embryo. Egg white proteins are composed of ovalbumin, conalbumin, lysozyme, ovomucoid, riboflavin binding protein (RfBP), and other less abundant proteins. Mutation of ovalbumin and RfBP genes increases the mortality of embryos; therefore, egg white might be closely related to poultry hatchability. Tsaiya duck (Anas platyrhynchos) is the major egg-laying duck in Taiwan. In this study, gene expression profiling by cDNA microarray chip technology was performed using mRNA prepared from the magnum epithelium of Tsaiya ducks, and a number of differentially expressed transcripts were found. Keywords = Tsaiya duck (Anas platyrhynchos), magnum, hachability, cDNA microarray, transcriptional profiling. Analysis used low hachability RNA as control samples for comparison to the experimental samples taken from high hachability group. Total RNA was isolated by the RareRNA reagent (GenePure). The MicroMax direct labeling kit (PerkinElmer) was used to prepare the labeled cDNA and further process the hybridization on the arrays. Dye swap was design with four arrays. Arrays were scanned using a GenePix 4000B microarray scanner (Axon Instruments). GenePix Pro 4.1 software was then used to acquire the raw data. The data was analyzed by Avadis software (Strand Life Science).
