China Animal Husbandry and Veterinary Medicine ›› 2022, Vol. 49 ›› Issue (5): 1806-1816.doi: 10.16431/j.cnki.1671-7236.2022.05.021

• Genetics and Breeding • Previous Articles     Next Articles

Research Progress on the Genetic Regulation Mechanism of Feather Color Traits in Domestic Chickens

WU Rifu1,2, QU Hao1, YAN Xia1, LUO Chenglong1, WANG Yan1, SHU Dingming1   

  1. 1. Guangdong Key Laboratory of Animal Breeding and Nutrition, State Key Laboratory of Livestock and Poultry Breeding, Institute of Animal Science, Guangdong Academy of Agricultural Sciences, Guangzhou 510640, China;
    2. College of Animal Science, South China Agricultural University, Guangzhou 510642, China
  • Received:2021-10-28 Online:2022-05-05 Published:2022-04-29

Abstract: Birds in the natural world show abundant feather colors,which plays an important role in avoiding natural enemies,predation,courtship,and resisting ultraviolet rays.Research on the color traits of chicken feathers helps to strengthen the differentiation and identification of breeds.It is particularly important to establish distinctive marks between breeds and ensure the appearance of the same breed in breeding work.Feather color is an important part of genetic research on poultry phenotype,mainly determined by melanin and carotenoids.At present,most researches on the genetic regulation mechanism of chicken feather color traits focus on melanin-related pathways.Studies have shown that Wnt,KIT/KITL and EDN3/EDNRB signaling pathways have important regulatory effects on the growth,migration and differentiation of melanomas,and α-MSH/ASIP-MC1R signaling pathway is responsible for regulating the synthesis of melanin.Existing studies have shown that it can reveal the genetic regulation mechanism of various feather traits such as black feather,stippled feather,dominant white feather,recessive white feather,autosomal albinism,silver feather,sex-linked imperfect albinism,dark brown feather,lavender feather (grey feather),tyrosinase-independent recessive white feather,mottled feather and sex-linked barring feather (Lu Hua feather) by genome-wide genetic variation detection technology,mining genes and variation loci related to feather color traits.Additionally,the Turing pattern was used as a theoretical basis to explain the formation mechanism of complex feather patterns.By summarizing the genetic regulation mechanism of melanin-related regulatory pathways and Turing pattern on chicken’s feather color traits,the authors reviewed the related research on chicken’s feather color traits that have identified loci in recent year to provide insights into the research on the molecular mechanism of chicken’s feather color and the marker-assisted selection of chicken’s feather color traits in the breeding process.

Key words: chickens; feather color; gene regulation; molecular inheritance; Turing pattern; melanin

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