Next Generation Sequencing Facilitates identification of crucial genes for feather vane shape variations

Purpose: The goals of this study is to identify crucial genes associated with narrow and wide vane sizes in feather epithelium and mesenchyme (pulp) Overall design: proximal follicles of 3 primary remiges from Spafas white leghorn chickens into the lateral and medial halves and separated the epithelium from the mesenchyme in 2xCMF solution. For dorsal plumes and breast plumes, 25 proximal follicles were used, respectively. Total RNA was extracted using Trizol reagent. 4 µg RNA was used for library construction by TruSeq RNA Sample Prep Kit Version2 (Illumina). Two biological replicates were sent for sequencing (50bp, single end) with Illumina HiSeq 2000 in the USC Epigenome Center.