Development of Gene Knock out Chicken by Genome Editing with CRISPR/Cas for augmentation of productivity in poultry

Abstract

For doubling farmers’ income by 2022 and to provide nutritional security to the farmers/consumers, rapid improvement in production of poultry eggs is immense important as the eggs are the most economical source of animal protein and is acceptable to the non-vegetarian people without having any religious taboo. The egg production of native Indigenous chicken is low (About 60 - 80eggs per annum). The per-capita availability of egg in India is 66 eggs per annum. But, the requirement of consuming eggs is 180 eggs per head per annum according to the recommendation of ICMR. During last many decades, conventional selection was used to improve egg production performance of birds, but the rate of genetic progress was very slow. To obtain faster genetic gain, one of the approaches may be blocking the negative factors inhibiting egg production in poultry. The negative factors are probably the main reason behind low egg production in Indigenous chicken breeds. Two most important negative factors for egg production are prolactin and inhibin. Prolactin plays many functions including regulation of broodiness, regression of the ovary, reducing number of graafian follicles and thus, be directly involved in loss of egg production in domestic chicken. Another egg limiting hormone, inhibin suppresses FSH secretion and minimize egg production in poultry. Keeping the role of prolactin and inhibin in mind, we have proposed this project to reduce the expression of prolactin and inhibin genes in chicken so that we can improve egg production at a very faster rate. The main objectives of this study are to characterize inhibin gene and its promoter in high and low egg producing chicken population, to explore the mechanism Page 3 Generated on 28-Feb-2019 03:54 PM of expression of inhibin gene during egg laying cycle and to develop knock out chicken for inhibin and prolactin genes to enhance egg productivity. The hypothesis of the present programme is to reduce the expression of negative regulators of egg production such as prolactin and inhibin. Inhibition of prolactin expression make the ovary healthy and increase the number of follicles, and ultimately, egg production will be enhanced. The inhibition of expression of inhibin will increase the expression of FSH from which follicular development would be optimized leading to higher level of ovulation and egg production. The major outputs of the project will be development of knock out chicken for inhibin and prolactin with improved egg production potential, characterization of inhibin gene and its promoter and exploration of the mechanism of expression of inhibin gene during egg laying cycle. The outcome of the project will be enhancement of egg production by developing knock out chicken for prolactin and inhibin genes. The per-capita income of the farmers will be increased by rearing these birds and we can achieve the target of doubling farmers’ income by 2022. This poultry model of inhibin expression may be used in human being to sort out the infertility problem.