Differential cardiac gene expression in genetically selected turkeys

Transcriptional profiling of turkey cardiac muscle at 1d post-hatch and 16wk birds of F (growth-selected) and RBC2 (randombred) lines In this study, we compared 1d post-hatch cardiac muscle to 16wk market weight for both the F and RBC2 lines using the 6K Turkey Skeletal Muscle Long Oligo (TSKMLO) microarray developed for transcriptional profiling of turkey muscle as it relates to growth, development, and downstream meat quality. The TSKMLO array also includes a number of unique controls probes for each of 30 randomly chosen genes: 1 scrambled sequence control, 3 “distance” controls that included oligos designed within 500, 501-1000, and 1001-1500 bases from the 3’ of the sequence, and 7 “mismatch” controls including 3, 5, 10, 15, 20, or 25 mismatched bases, totaling 300 control probes. There were 3 biological replicates for each comparison for a total of 12 arrays. Dye assignments were reversed an equal number of times within each comparison to avoid dye bias. Birds were randomly assigned to array, and hybridizations were performed randomly.