Genetic Assessment of Inbred Chicken Lines Indicates Genomic Signatures of Resistance to Marek’S Disease Lingyang Xu1,2,3*†, Yanghua He1†, Yi Ding1, George E
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Xu et al. Journal of Animal Science and Biotechnology (2018) 9:65 https://doi.org/10.1186/s40104-018-0281-x RESEARCH Open Access Genetic assessment of inbred chicken lines indicates genomic signatures of resistance to Marek’s disease Lingyang Xu1,2,3*†, Yanghua He1†, Yi Ding1, George E. Liu2, Huanmin Zhang4, Hans H. Cheng4, Robert L. Taylor Jr.5 and Jiuzhou Song1* Abstract Background: Marek’s disease (MD) is a highly contagious pathogenic and oncogenic disease primarily affecting chickens. However, the mechanisms of genetic resistance for MD are complex and not fully understood. MD-resistant line 63 and MD-susceptible line 72 are two highly inbred progenitor lines of White Leghorn. Recombinant Congenic Strains (RCS) were developed from these two lines, which show varied susceptibility to MD. Results: We investigated genetic structure and genomic signatures across the genome, including the line 63 and line 72, six RCSs, and two reciprocally crossed flocks between the lines 63 and 72 (F1 63 ×72 and F1 72 ×63)using Affymetrix® Axiom® HD 600 K genotyping array. We observed 18 chickens from RCS lines were specifically clustered into resistance sub-groups distributed around line 63. Additionally, homozygosity analysis was employed to explore potential genetic components related to MD resistance, while runs of homozygosity (ROH) are regions of the genome where the identical haplotypes are inherited from each parent. We found several genes including SIK, SOX1, LIG4, SIK1 and TNFSF13B were contained in ROH region identified in resistant group (line 63 and RCS), and these genes have been reported that are contribute to immunology and survival. Based on FST based population differential analysis, we also identified important genes related to cell death and anti-apoptosis, including AKT1, API5, CDH13, CFDP and USP15, which could be involved in divergent selection during inbreeding process. Conclusions: Our findings offer valuable insights for understanding the genetic mechanism of resistance to MD and the identified genes could be considered as candidate biomarkers in further evaluation. Keywords: Genetic structure, Genomic signature, Homozygosity, Marek’s disease, Recombinant Congenic Strains (RCS) Background worldwide, and interest for its economic importance to Poultry products are main components of our daily life. the commercial poultry industry. The complexity of food safety and quality issues facing MDV transforms mainly CD4+ T cells and causes vari- the poultry industry are rapidly escalating, and many ous clinical syndromes in chicken tissues, which include other critical issues (i.e., bioterrorism, environmental peripheral nerves, gonad, iris, muscle, viscera, and skin stewardship and global competitiveness) are emerging [2]. MDV is shed and transmitted between birds via epi- simultaneously. Marek’s disease (MD) is a T cell lymph- thelial cells of the feather follicle, dander, chicken house oma induced by the widespread and readily transmissible dust, feces and saliva. Vaccines were developed to con- Marek’s disease virus (MDV) [1]. MD is one of the main trol the disease but are not sterilizing allowing the virus chronic infectious diseases threatening the poultry to replicate and spread. Thus, in the last few decades, field strains of the virus have evolved resulting in new subtypes that the vaccines may not completely control * Correspondence: [email protected]; [email protected] † [3]. MDV has proven to be a valuable comparative bio- Lingyang Xu and Yanghua He contributed equally to this work. medical model organism for understanding the princi- 1Department of Animal & Avian Sciences, University of Maryland, College Park, MD 20742, USA ples of human disease [4] and MD is a natural model for Full list of author information is available at the end of the article © The Author(s). 2018 Open Access This article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons license, and indicate if changes were made. The Creative Commons Public Domain Dedication waiver (http://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/) applies to the data made available in this article, unless otherwise stated. Xu et al. Journal of Animal Science and Biotechnology (2018) 9:65 Page 2 of 10 lymphomas overexpressing Hodgkin’s disease antigen carried out to explore potential genetic mechanism of [5]. However, there is a shortage of genetic information MD disease. Our studies revealed several genes related about the virus host and etiological process leading to to regulation of cell death and anti-apoptosis, which are MDV uptake, dissemination, latency and tumor probably related to the resistance to MD. formation. Currently, control strategies for MD predominantly rely Methods on vaccination of chickens. But the vaccination cannot Experimental population provide complete protection because of the changing na- In total, 30 chickens without treatments were selected ture of the disease itself and evolution of MDV with esca- and genotyped in this study. Among them, three were lated virulence [4]. Recently, studies using integrating from each of the line 72, line 63, reciprocal cross F1 hy- genomic approaches identified genes and molecular brid 72 ×63, F1 hybrid 63 ×72, and six recombinant con- markers associated with MD disease resistance [6]. genic strains (RCSs) [C, J, M, N, S and X] [11]. RCSs Genetic makers, quantitative trait loci (QTL) and genom- were developed using line 63 as the parental strain ics regions in a large reciprocal backcross (BC) were mated to line 72 and then backcrossed to line 63 twice discovered between two partially inbred commercial followed by full-sib matings for about 20 generations. White Leghorn layer chicken [7] and in an F6 advanced Eventually, diverse RCSs were generated and they intercross population of commercial layer chickens [8]. contain 87.5% of line 63 and 12.5% of line 72 in the gen- Additionally, gene expression using transcript array [9, 10] etic background but with different MD resistance and allele-specific expression analysis using RNA sequen- (Additional file 1: Figure S1) [3, 13]. In this study, six cing [11] have been utilized to understand response to RCSs above were chosen to check their genetic back- MDV infection and MD genetic resistance. ground and reveal their particular resistant signatures. To determine the genetic components pertaining to disease resistance, the Avian Disease and Oncology La- Genotyping and quality control boratory (ADOL) has successfully developed inbred Genomic DNA from red blood cells was extracted using chicken lines resistant or susceptible to MD as a power- the DNeasy Blood & Tissue Mini Kit (QIAGEN). Geno- ful experimental model for investigation of host resist- typing for the 30 chickens was performed using the ance to this disease, the inbred lines 63 and 72. The Affymetrix® Axiom® Genome-Wide Chicken Genotyping percentage of chickens developing a tumor or tumors in- Array (600 K) by the Affymetrix service facility accord- duced by a partially attenuated vv + strain of MDV dif- ing to the manufacturer’s protocols [14]. Affymetrix fered significantly between the two lines of chickens. adopts a preliminary call rate of 90% that is used by de- Genetic resistance to MD in chickens is commonly eval- fault to pass arrays for further data analysis. Successfully uated with MD incidence post-MDV challenge, which passed arrays were clustered and final genotypes were had been descripted in previous study [12]. Only 0–3% generated using the Axiom GT1 algorithm. Quality con- of line 63 chickens developed tumors 8 wk post infection trol was assessed in Genotyping Console v4.1.3. All compared to 99%–100% of line 72 chickens. Importantly, chosen samples genotyped on Affymetrix SNP array met 19 recombinant congenic strains (RCS) have been devel- the 99% call rate. oped using the inbred lines 63 and 72 as progenitor lines. The tumor incidence differs among RCS either vacci- Multidimensional scaling and admixture analysis nated or unvaccinated. Thus, the varied resistance Quality control were considered using the following se- among the RCS can provide an ideal model to investi- lection criteria: MAF ≥ 0.01 (including SNPs with gate genomic components that play vital roles in genetic MAF ≥ 0.01), geno ≥0.1 (including only SNPs with a resistance to MD. Although a previous study has dem- 90% genotyping rate or higher), and P value of x2 test − onstrated some genetic variability among the RCSs by for Hardy-Weinberg equilibrium ≥10 6. To avoid link- microsatellite fingerprinting [2], genetic variations age distortion for the population structure analysis, underlying varied susceptibility to MD in the RCS lines SNPs were pruned for linkage disequilibrium (LD) remains poorly understood. using pair-wise genotype correction (r2 >0.2)in50SNP In this study, we hypothesized that differential gen- sliding widows with a step of 10 SNPs across the gen- omic signatures contribute to MD resistance in the RCS. ome. To look for evidence of population substructure, Using ten lines, including line 63 and line 72, two hybrid we carried out Multidimensional Scaling (MDS) ana- F1 (F1 63–72 and F1 72–63) and six RCSs representing lysis using 5,064 LD filtered SNPs among all 30 chick- various capacity in resistance/susceptibility to MD,