Work Package 4 – Gut Health and Functionality

Rationale: Improving the management of animal gut health is crucial to reducing the risk of food-borne infections, reducing the use of antibiotics and feed additives, and reducing the level of pollutants from livestock. This work package is therefore central to delivering more sustainable breeding strategies that meet consumers’ need for safe, high quality food and sustainable food production. It has been demonstrated that in several animal species there is genetic diversity in susceptibility to intestinal infectious disease and in terms of efficiency of both immune response and nutrient uptake. The molecular basis for much of this variability is still unknown. Dissection of these related traits and identification of genes and molecular pathways that govern gut health is therefore urgently required.

Objectives

·       Perform expression analysis in chicken and pigs upon nutritional and microbial challenge using different genetic resources and (infection) models

·       Provide expression data for integration with mapping information and pathway data (WP1 (Numerical Genomics) and WP3 (Genomics and Bioinformatics))

·       Provide QTL and fine mapping data in chicken and pigs controlling gut health and functionality parameters

·       Provide a list of biological and positional relevant genes associated with gut health and functionality

·       Identification of genetic variation in currently known and newly discovered candidate genes and assessment of segregation in broader populations

WP Leader: Dr Annemarie Rebel (ID-Lelystad)

Partners involved:

ID-Lelystad

Institute for Animal Health

Cordoba University

Parco Tecnologico Padano

Institute National de la Recherche Agronomique

CNRS-UPR

The Roslin Institute and R(D)SVS, University of Edinburgh

University of Copenhagen Faculty of Life Sciences

JiangXi Agricultural University

Zhejiang University

China Agricultural University