A couple of weeks ago I presented my halftime seminar at IFM Biology, Linköping university. The halftime at our department isn’t a particularly dramatic event, but it means that after you’ve been going for two and a half years (since a typical Swedish PhD programme is four years plus 20% teaching to a total of five years), you get to talk about what you’ve been up to and discuss it with an invited opponent. I talked about combining genetic mapping and gene expression to search for quantitative trait genes for chicken domestication traits, and the work done so far particularly with relative comb mass. To give my esteemed readers an overview of what my project is about, here come a few of my slides about the mapping work — it is described in detail in Johnsson & al (2012). Yes, it does feel very good to write that — shout-outs to all the coauthors! This is part what I said on the seminar, part digression more suited for the blog format. Enjoy!

(Photo: Dominic Wright)

The common theme of my PhD project is genetic mapping and genetical genomics in an experimental intercross of wild and domestic chickens. The photo shows some of them as chicks. Since plumage colour is one of the things that segregate in this cross, their feathers actually make a very nice illustration of what is going on. We’re interested in traits that differ between wild and domestic chickens, so we use a cross based on a Red Jungefowl male and three domestic White Leghorn females. Their offspring have been mated with each other for several generations, giving rise to what is called an advanced intercross line. Genetic variants that cause differences between White Leghorn and Red Jungefowl chickens will segregate among the birds of the cross, and are mixed by recombination at meiosis. Some of the birds have the Red Junglefowl variant and some have the White Leghorn variant at a given part of their genome. By measuring traits that vary in the cross, and genotyping the birds for a map of genetic markers, we can find chromosomal chunks that are associated with particular traits, i.e. regions of the genome where we’re reasonably confident harbour a variant affecting the trait. These chromosomal chunks tend to be rather large, though, and contain several genes. My job is to use gene expression measurements from the cross to help zero in on the right genes.

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