Transcriptional profiles in the chicken ductus arteriosus during hatching

The ductus arteriosus constricts after birth or hatching and eventually closes to terminate embryonic circulation. Chicken embryos have two long ductus arteriosus. Then the pulmonary artery-sided and descending aorta-sided ductus arteriosus have distinct functional characteristics, such as oxygen responsiveness. We used microarrays to elucidate the difference between the pulmonary artery-sided and descending aorta-sided ductus arteriosus in their transcriptional profiles. Chicken tissues of the right-sided ductus arteriosus and the aorta were selected at the internal pipping (IP) stage for RNA extraction and hybridization on Affymetrix microarrays. We then divided each long ductus arteriosus into two parts: the pulmonary artery-sided and descending aorta-sided ductus arteriosus.