Gene expression profiling of the early pathogenesis of wooden breast disease in commercial broiler chickens using RNA-sequencing

• DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0207346
• Publication Date: 2018-12-05T18:27:49Z
• Authors: Michael B. Papah; Erin M. Brannick; Carl J. Schmidt; Behnam Abasht
• Keywords: Pectoralis major muscle; Pathogenesis; Fold change

Wooden Breast Disease (WBD), a myopathy in commercial broiler chickens characterized by abnormally firm consistency of the pectoral muscle, impacts poultry industry negatively due to severe reduction meat quality traits. To unravel molecular profile associated with onset and early development WBD chickens, we compared time-series gene expression profiles Pectoralis (P.) major muscles between unaffected affected birds from high-breast-muscle-yield, purebred line. P. biopsy samples were collected cranial caudal aspects muscle belly that raised up 7 weeks age (i.e. market age). Three subsets comprising 6 (U) 10 (A) week 2 (cranial) 4 (caudal), 4U 11A 3 processed for RNA-sequencing analysis. Sequence reads generated using suite bioinformatics programs producing differentially expressed (DE) genes each dataset at fold-change (A/U or U/A) >1.3 False Discovery Ratio (FDR) <0.05 (week 2: 41 genes; 3: 618 4: 39 genes). Functional analysis DE literature mining, BioDBnet IPA revealed several biological processes pathways progress WBD. Top among them dysregulation energy metabolism, response inflammation, vascular disease remodeling extracellular matrix. This study reveals presence perturbations involving vasculature, matrix metabolism are pertinent pathogenesis meat-type chickens.