Blog Post

Biology Group Project

WHO YOU CALLIN’ CHICKEN?!

Our experiment is exploring the various similarities (or differences) between the proteins of the breast, leg, and heart of a turkey, to that of a chicken. Based on the findings of (SEE REFERENCE SECTION) it would seem the turkey and the chicken are actually quite similar genomically.  It was found through experimentation that, between the two species, they share about 89% of genome coverage, as well as 90% exon coverage.  In contrast, in regards to possible protein matches, the chicken was shown to have shared 9,816 of its ~23,000 orthologs (genes in different species that evolved from a common gene through speciation) with the turkey, which stands at ~16,000 total orthologs.  This shows a large disparagement between the bases (in which the genome is made up from) and the orthologs that are shared shows that the species are still quite distinct, despite their similarities in looks and genome.  To translate this to our particular experiment, we may in fact find that between similar areas of tissue location of the species in question, but we should not be surprised if they happen to be different, given their diversity on the protein level.  

References:

Arsenault RJ, Trost B, Kogut MH. A Comparison of the Chicken and Turkey Proteomes and Phosphoproteomes in the Development of Poultry-Specific Immuno-Metabolism Kinome Peptide Arrays. Frontiers in Veterinary Science. 2014 [accessed 2017 Feb 10];1. http://journal.frontiersin.org/article/10.3389/fvets.2014.00022/full#h4