Association of Adipocyte Fatty Acid-Binding Protein A-FABP Gene with Growth and Body Composition Traits in Arian Commercial Broiler Lines

Although traditional selection for phenotypic values of broiler chickens has made significant improvements in growth rates and meat yields during the past half century, poultry geneticists face additional challenges today, and this is mainly because of negative correlations between production and fitness traits. Accompanying selection for rapid growth, meat-type birds exhibit an increase in physiological disorders. Production performance and fitness traits are negatively correlated in the chicken. Multi-trait selection to improve fitness traits and increase production performance simultaneously is difficult to achieve by using only direct phenotype selection. Molecular marker-assisted selection may be required to increase selection efficiency and make further improvements in productionperformance. The current study was designed to investigate the associations of AFABP gene polymorphism on chicken growth and body composition traits. So, using PCR-RFLP method, genomic DNAs were extracted from 400 chickens from four different commercial broiler lines. The Taq1 restriction site in exon 1 of A-FABP gene was studied. In addition, the results of PCR-RFLP were verified by DNA sequencing. The comparison of least square means of different genotypes indicated that polymorphism in A-FABP gene was not significant associations (P>0.05) with growth and body composition traits. This research suggests that A-FABP gene could not be a candidate gene that can have an effect on growth and body composition traits in Iranian commercial broiler lines.