NEW YORK (GenomeWeb News) – Investigators at the Roslin Institute at the University of Edinburgh and the Institute for Animal Health in Pirbright, England have received a £600,000 ($950,000) grant from the UK government to study genes that may enable some poultry to resist fowl typhoid.
The researchers will use the funding from the Biotechnology and Biological Sciences Research Council and the Erich Wesjohann Group to discover why some chickens are resistant to the systemic disease, which is caused by Salmonella. They plan to fine-map quantitative trait loci that are associated with fowl typhoid resistance, assess the penetrance of alleles and polymorphisms that are associated with resistance, and study how these traits make the animals resistant.
The hope is that the project will generate markers that can be used to select birds with improved resistance to systemic salmonellosis.
The collaborators include Roslin Institute Professors Mark Stevens and Peter Kaiser and IAH's Mark Fife, a research leader in genetics and genomics.
The chickens used in the research will be provided by a National Avian Research Facility that will be located in Easter Bush.