Inheritance of the duration of fertility in chickens and its correlation with laying performance.

Background: Duration of fertility (DF) is an important economic trait in poultry production because it has a strong effect on chick output. Various criteria or traits to assess DF on individual hens have been reported but they are affected by many nongenetic factors. Thus, a reliable definition and associated genetic parameters are needed.

Joint contributions of the gut microbiota and host genetics to feed efficiency in chickens.

Background: Feed contributes most to livestock production costs. Improving feed efficiency is crucial to increase profitability and sustainability for animal production. Host genetics and the gut microbiota can both influence the host phenotype.

Genetic basis of negative heterosis for growth traits in chickens revealed by genome-wide gene expression pattern analysis.

Background: Heterosis is an important biological phenomenon that has been extensively utilized in agricultural breeding. However, negative heterosis is also pervasively observed in nature, which can cause unfavorable impacts on production performance. Compared with systematic studies of positive heterosis, the phenomenon of negative heterosis has been largely ignored in genetic studies and breeding programs, and the genetic mechanism of this phenomenon has not been thoroughly elucidated to date.

Detrimental effects of excessive fatty acid secretion on female sperm storage in chickens.

Background: Female sperm storage (FSS), the maintenance of sperm inside the female reproductive tract for an extended period of time, is pervasive among organisms with internal fertilization. Because FSS enables asynchronous mating and fertilization, it could be extremely important to reproduction. However, the physiological mechanisms underlying prolonged preservation and maintenance are poorly understood.

Implications of Gene Inheritance Patterns on the Heterosis of Abdominal Fat Deposition in Chickens.

Heterosis, a phenomenon characterized by the superior performance of hybrid individuals relative to their parents, has been widely utilized in livestock and crop breeding, while the underlying genetic basis remains elusive in chickens. Here, we performed a reciprocal crossing experiment with broiler and layer chickens and conducted RNA sequencing on liver tissues for reciprocal crosses and their parental lines to identify inheritance patterns of gene expression. Our results showed that heterosis of the abdominal fat percentage was 69.