Andersson, Leif
- Department of Animal Biosciences, Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences
Abstract
Silky-feather has been selected and fixed in some breeds due to its unique appearance. This phenotype is caused by a single recessive gene (hookless, h). Here we map the silky-feather locus to chromosome 3 by linkage analysis and subsequently fine-map it to an 18.9 kb interval using the identical by descent (IBD) method. Further analysis reveals that a C to G transversion located upstream of the prenyl (decaprenyl) diphosphate synthase, subunit 2 (PDSS2) gene is causing silky-feather. All silky-feather birds are homozygous for the G allele. The silky-feather mutation significantly decreases the expression of PDSS2 during feather development in vivo. Consistent with the regulatory effect, the C to G transversion is shown to remarkably reduce PDSS2 promoter activity in vitro. We report a new example of feather structure variation associated with a spontaneous mutation and provide new insight into the PDSS2 function.
Published in
PLoS Genetics
2014, volume: 10, number: 8, article number: e1004576
Publisher: PUBLIC LIBRARY SCIENCE
SLU Authors
UKÄ Subject classification
Genetics and Genomics
Publication identifier
- DOI: https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pgen.1004576
Permanent link to this page (URI)
https://res.slu.se/id/publ/68276