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Comparative liver transcriptome analysis of duck reveals potential genes associated with egg production

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Abstract

Background

Molecular studies on egg production in ducks were mostly focused on brain and ovaries as they are directly involved in egg production. Liver plays a vital role in cellular lipid metabolism. It also plays a decisive role in reproductive organ development, including yolk generation in laying ducks at sexual maturity. However, the precise molecular mechanism involved in the liver-blood-ovary axis in ducks remains elusive.

Methods and Results

In this study, we analysed the liver transcriptome of laying (LA), immature (IM) and broody (BR) ducks using RNA sequencing to understand the role of genes expressed in the liver. The comparative transcriptome analysis revealed 82 DEGs between LA and IM ducks, 47 DEGs between LA and BR ducks and 51 DEGs between IM and BR ducks. GO analysis of DEGs, showed that DEGs were mainly involved in cellular anatomical entity, intracellular, metabolic process, and binding. Furthermore, pathway analysis indicated the important role of Wnt signaling pathway in egg formation and embryo development. Our study showed several candidate genes including vitellogenin-1, vitellogenin-2, riboflavin binding protein, G protein subunit gamma 4, and fatty acid binding protein 3 that are potentially related to egg production in ducks.

Conclusions

The study provides valuable information on the genes responsible for egg production and thus, pave the way for further investigation on the molecular mechanisms of egg production in duck.

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Data availability statement

The transcriptome data are available at NCBI under the accession number PRJNA791524.

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Acknowledgements

The first author is thankful to the Central University of Kerala for the support in the form of a research fellowship. The corresponding author is thankful to the Central University of Kerala for providing the necessary facilities to carry out the work.

Funding

The study was partially supported by the Department of Biotechnology (BT/PR14584/AAQ/1/647/2015), New Delhi and Science and Engineering Research Board (EEQ/2016/000390), Department of Science and Technology, New Delhi.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Genomic Science, School of Biological Sciences, Central University of Kerala, 671316, Kasaragod, Kerala, India

    Koodali Nimisha & Muniyandi Nagarajan

  2. Department of Animal Science, College of Agriculture and Life Sciences, Cornell University, 14853, Ithaca, NY, United States

    Krishnamoorthy Srikanth

  3. AgriGenome Labs Pvt. Ltd, 682042, Kochi, Kerala, India

    Dinesh Velayutham & Dharam Nandan

  4. Department of Poultry Science, College of Veterinary and Animal Sciences, 680 651, Mannuthy, Thrissur, Kerala, India

    Shanmugam Sankaralingam

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  1. Koodali Nimisha
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  2. Krishnamoorthy Srikanth
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  5. Shanmugam Sankaralingam
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Contributions

MN: conceived the study. KN: performed the experiments. KN, KS, DV, DN: performed the analyses. KN, M.N, KS, SS. wrote the manuscript. All the authors have seen and approved the manuscript being submitted.

Corresponding author

Correspondence to Muniyandi Nagarajan.

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The authors declare that they have no conflicts of interest.

Ethical approval

There were no experiments on duck in the present study. The liver tissue samples were collected from the deceased domestic ducks from a slaughterhouse in compliance with the research ethical standards of India. Hence no approval of animal ethics committee was required for this study.

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All authors have significantly contributed to the study, read the manuscript, and consented to submit for publication in the journal Molecular Biology Reports.

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This study does not contain any studies with human participants.

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Nimisha, K., Srikanth, K., Velayutham, D. et al. Comparative liver transcriptome analysis of duck reveals potential genes associated with egg production. Mol Biol Rep 49, 5963–5972 (2022). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11033-022-07380-7

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11033-022-07380-7

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