Single nucleotide polymorphism analysis in chicken growth hormone gene and its associations with growth and carcass traits

In this experiment, F2 chicken derived from Broilers crossing to Silky are used to study the effect of growth hormone gene on growth and carcass traits. The partial gene is amplified by two pairs of primers, and single nucleotide polymorphism (SNPs) is detected by the technique of PCR-RFLP (restriction fragment length polymorphism), and then confirmed by DNA sequencing. The mutations are found in intron 3 and intron 4 respectively, and can be clarified by digestion with EcoRand Msp. The results of least square analysis indicate that the gene has significant association with some carcass traits, such as breast muscle weight, breast muscle rate, abdominal fat rate, and has no association with other growth and carcass traits, such as live weight, carcass weight, eviscerated yield with giblet, eviscerated yield, leg muscle weight, heart weight, liver weight, abdominal fat weight, chest angle width, head and neck weight, shank and claw weight, wing weight, muscular stomach weight, glandular stomach weight, ovary or testicular weight, shank girth, small intestine length, 1-week body weight, 6-week body weight, 12-week body weight, etc. These results demonstrate that GH gene could be a genetic locus or linked to a major gene significantly affecting the growth and carcass traits in chicken.