Partner 21 - University of Glasgow (UG)

The poultry research group at UG developed the use of eggshell structure as a novel means of assessing eggshell quality and over the last 25 years has pioneered this approach in a variety of experimental and industrial investigations. The multidisciplinary approach adopted by UG in the assessment of eggshell quality makes use of the integration of techniques as diverse as microbiology, scanning electron microscopy, fracture mechanics, finite element analysis, and x-ray micro structural analysis. UG has recently been actively involved in a number of national and international collaborations, including an EPSRC funded project on The Structural Integrity of Eggs and an EC-funded project acronym ‘Egg defence’. The egg defence project has particular relevance to SABRE in that it highlighted the potential for marker assisted selection as a means to improve eggshell quality by establishing for the first time that there was an   association between several eggshell phenotypic traits and ‘candidate genes’ for eggshell matrix proteins. UG's contribution to the current project is to extend the range of novel phenotypic traits currently available in our commercial pedigree population and thus contribute to the location of quantitative trait loci.
 
Involved in:
WP7

Key staff in SABRE:
Dr Maureen Bain - UG-SABRE Coordinator
Prof. David Taylor
Iain McNaught
M Fuentes

Contact Details:
University of Glasgow
Division of Cell Sciences, Institute of Comparative Medicine
Bearsden Road
Glasgow
G61 1HQ

Tel:  +44141 330 5719
Fax: +44141 330 6906

www.gla.ac.uk

http://www.gla.ac.uk/vet/research/cellscience/avian/index.html