›› 2013, Vol. 40 ›› Issue (11): 139-142.

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Genetic Regulation Studies on Avian Fearful Behavior:A Review

GUO Jun, WANG Ke-hua, QU Liang   

  1. Institute of Poultry Science, Chinese Academy of Agricultural Sciences, Yangzhou 225125, China
  • Received:2013-04-24 Online:2013-11-20 Published:2013-12-19

Abstract: Fearful behavior remained to be an important cause of loss in poultry production,it would be hardly picked out by traditional methods. With the advances of genome-wide association study, comparative genomics and QTL mapping, great progress had been made in identifying genes related to fearful behavior in poultry. Expression in fearful behavior were significantly differences between breeds and sex. Chicken, quail and pheasant had been selectively bred to show differences in fearful behavior through bidirectional selection. It had been reported that polymorphisms of candidate genes, such as serotonin genes, dopamine receptor, were associated with fearful behavior. However, many of these results had needed further confirmation. Based on the results from genome-wide linkage and association analyses on different subject populations, 37 loci located on 9 chromosomes were reported to harbor fearful genes in chicken. It's expected that the dissections in genetic architecture of avian fearful behavior would provide a basis on selection and genetic improvement on local breed.

Key words: fearful behavior; genetic architecture; candidate genes; QTL; poultry

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