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. 2021 May 14;22(1):349.
doi: 10.1186/s12864-021-07688-x.

Transcriptome analysis of ovary tissues from low- and high-yielding Changshun green-shell laying hens

Ren Mu  1 , Yi-Yin Yu  1 , Tuya Gegen  2 , Di Wen  1 , Fen Wang  1 , Zhi Chen  3 , Wen-Bin Xu  4   5
Affiliations

Transcriptome analysis of ovary tissues from low- and high-yielding Changshun green-shell laying hens

Ren Mu et al. BMC Genomics. .

Abstract

Background: Changshun green-shell laying hens are unique to Guizhou Province, China, and have high egg quality. Improving egg production performance has become an important breeding task, and in recent years, the development of high-throughput sequencing technology provides a fast and exact method for genetic selection. Therefore, we aimed to use this technology to analyze the differences between the ovarian mRNA transcriptome of low and high-yield Changshun green-shell layer hens, identify critical pathways and candidate genes involved in controlling the egg production rate, and provide basic data for layer breeding.

Results: The egg production rates of the low egg production group (LP) and the high egg production group (HP) were 68.00 ± 5.56 % and 93.67 ± 7.09 %, with significant differences between the groups (p < 0.01). Moreover, the egg weight, shell thickness, strength and layer weight of the LP were significantly greater than those of the HP (p < 0.05). More than 41 million clean reads per sample were obtained, and more than 90 % of the clean reads were mapped to the Gallus gallus genome. Further analysis identified 142 differentially expressed genes (DEGs), and among them, 55 were upregulated and 87 were downregulated in the ovaries. KEGG pathway enrichment analysis identified 9 significantly enriched pathways, with the neuroactive ligand-receptor interaction pathway being the most enriched. GO enrichment analysis indicated that the GO term transmembrane receptor protein tyrosine kinase activity, and the DEGs identified in this GO term, including PRLR, NRP1, IL15, BANK1, NTRK1, CCK, and HGF may be associated with crucial roles in the regulation of egg production.

Conclusions: The above-mentioned DEGs may be relevant for the molecular breeding of Changshun green-shell laying hens. Moreover, enrichment analysis indicated that the neuroactive ligand-receptor interaction pathway and receptor protein tyrosine kinases may play crucial roles in the regulation of ovarian function and egg production.

Keywords: Changshun green-shell laying hens; Egg production; Ovary; Transcriptome analysis.

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Conflict of interest statement

The authors declare that they have no competing interests.

Figures

Fig. 1
Fig. 1
PCA score plot of ovary transcriptomes. HP, high egg production group; LP, low egg production group. Green point, samples from HP; Red point, samples from LP
Fig. 2
Fig. 2
Volcano plot of all expressed genes. The red plots represent significantly upregulated genes; the blue plots represent significantly down − regulated genes; the gray plot represents genes with no significance
Fig. 3
Fig. 3
Hierarchical clustering analysis of DEGs. HP, high egg production group; LP, low egg production group
Fig. 4
Fig. 4
KEGG pathway enrichment analysis of DEGs. Count, number of DEGs enriched in the pathway
Fig. 5
Fig. 5
GO enrichment analysis of DEGs. BP, biological processes; CC, cellular components; MF, molecular function
Fig. 6
Fig. 6
qRT-PCR validation of differentially expressed genes identified in transcriptome sequencing. The relative expression levels of genes were calculated according to the 2−ΔΔCt method using β-actin as an internal reference RNA. **, P < 0.01. LP, low rate of egg production group; HP, high rate of egg production group
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