Gene expression in chicken wing flight feather regeneration

Avian feather has robust regeneration capability. Long noncoding RNAs (lncRNAs) are non-protein coding transcripts that are involved in various biological processes. We infected the regenerating feather follicles with lentivirus to over express Wnt5a or knock down two lncRNAs (lnc3501&lnc7831) separately. The regenerated follicles were dissected at 4 days after infection. We compared gene expression of infected follicles with normal T4 control follicles. Our results revealed that lncRNAs may modulate Wnt signaling. Feather follicles were plucked to induce regeneration. Lentiviral vectors were used to overexpress (pLVX-Zsgreen) or knockdown (pLL3.7) gene expression in the feather follicle. The regenerated feather follicles from the wing flight feather were dissected under a stereo dissection microscope. Total RNAs of five pooled follicles were extracted by using Trizol reagent and standard protocols were followed.