Gene Expression Profiling of the Early Pathogenesis of Wooden Breast Disease In Commercial Broiler Chickens Using RNA-Sequencing

The main objective of this study was to decipher the gene expression profile associated with the onset and early development of Wooden Breast Disease in commercial broiler chickens. To achieve this, pectoralis major muscle biopsy samples were harvested from high-breast-muscle-yield, purebred broiler line. The pectoral biopsy samples were collected from the cranial (week 2 and 3) and caudal (week 4) aspects of the muscle belly in birds which were allowed to grow up to 7 weeks of age. Three subsets of biopsy samples comprising 6 unaffected (U) and 10 affected (A) from week 2 and 4 and 4U and 12A from week 3 were processed for RNA-sequencing analysis. All selected samples were processed using Truseq stranded mRNA LT sample kit for paired-end 2x75-nucleotide sequencing with Illumina Hiseq 2500 sequencer.

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