Study of Ovalbumin gene polymorphism and its role in external quality eggs of Esfahan fwols

Ovalbumin is one of the active proteins of eggshell matrix that affects eggshell calcification. This gene is located on chromosome 2 The aim of the present study was to investigate the association between two region polymorphism of ovalbumin exon 8 with some of external egg quality traits by RFLP and SSCP techniques in Isfahan native chicken. In this study, the genomic DNA was extracted from blood by standard kit and target regions of gene were amplificated using PCR. Polymorphism in a region of exon 8 having length 199 bp was studied by Mnl1- RFLP and SSCP, in other region with 407 bp length by SSCP techniques. In order to genotype chicken, electrophoresis on polyacrylamide gel following silver staining was used. In the first region two genotypes including A1A1, A1A2 were detected by RFLP and three genotypes B1B1, B1B2 and B3B3 by SSCP techniques. In the second region, three genotypes including C1C1, C1C2 and C2C2 were identified. The most genotypes frequencies belonged to A1A1, B1B2 and C2C2, and heterozygosity means were obtained 0.33, 0.51 and 0.33 respectively. Analysis of data didn’t show any significant association between traits and 199 bp fragment (P>0.05). Egg weight had significant association with 407 bp fragment (P˂0.05) that C1C2 genotype was lighter than other two genotypes, but association were not significant with other traits (P>0.05). Results showed that ovalbumin gene has a relatively high polymorphism and could be considered in future breeding programs of native fowl herd of Isfahan.