BackgroundGenomic regions controlling abdominal fatness (AF) were studied in the Northeast Agricultural University broiler line divergently selected for AF. In this study, the chicken 60KSNP chip and extended haplotype homozygosity (EHH) test were used to detect genome-wide signatures of AF.ResultsA total of 5357 and 5593 core regions were detected in the lean and fat lines, and 51 and 57 reached a significant level (P<0.01), respectively. A number of genes in the significant core regions, including RB1, BBS7, MAOA, MAOB, EHBP1, LRP2BP, LRP1B, MYO7A, MYO9A and PRPSAP1, were detected. These genes may be important for AF deposition in chickens.ConclusionsWe provide a genome-wide map of selection signatures in the chicken genome, and make a contribution to the better understanding the mechanisms of selection for AF content in chickens. The selection for low AF in commercial breeding using this information will accelerate the breeding progress.

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Lipoprotein Lipase plays an important role in adipose functioning signal transduction and it may have direct effects on the deposition of adipose tissues and the body weight ,the Lipoprotein Lipase ( LPL) gene ,therefore ,can be considered as a candidate gene in the study of fat deposition of the chicken. The function of LPL gene has been intensively studied in mammals ,but study of LPLgene in the chicken is still rare. In this paper ,the NEAU divergent selection broiler lines for abdominal fat were used.Body weightand fatness traits were measured in the sixth generation broiler population of the two lines at 7 week of age. One pair of primers for LPL gene were designed according to the database of chicken genomic sequence (Accession No. X60547) . The SNPs Were detected by DNA sequencing ,and PCR-SSCP method was then developed to screen the population. The correlation analysis between the polymorphisms of the LPL gene and growth and fatness traits in the population was carried out using the appropriate statistical model. Three SNPs were found in the population. Those were C235T、C278T and C293T. The least square analysis showed that FF genotype birds had significant higher ( P < 0.05) body weight than EG,FG and GG genotype birds ,and FF genotype birds had significant higher ( P < 0105) weights of abdominal fat than EF,EG and FG genotype birds at the same time. From these results we can putatively drew the conclusion that LPL gene may be a major gene to affect the fatness traits or linked to the major gene ,and the three polymorphisms found in LPL gene could be used to select the chicken for low abdominal fat in molecular marker assisted selection programs.

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