Absence of single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) in the open reading frame (ORF) of the prion protein gene (PRNP) in a large sampling of various chicken breeds.

BACKGROUND:Prion diseases are zoonotic diseases with a broad infection spectrum among mammalian hosts and are caused by the misfolded prion protein (PrP^Sc) derived from the normal prion protein (PrP^C), which encodes the prion protein gene (PRNP). Currently, although several prion disease-resistant animals have been reported, a high dose of prion agent inoculation triggers prion disease infection in these disease-resistant animals. However, in chickens, natural prion disease-infected cases have not been reported, and experimental challenges with prion agents have failed to cause infection. Unlike other prion disease-resistant animals, chickens have shown perfect resistance to prion disease thus far. Thus, investigation of the chicken PRNP gene could improve for understanding the mechanism of perfect prion-disease resistance. Here, we investigated the genetic characteristics of the open reading frame (ORF) of the chicken PRNP gene in a large sampling of various chicken breeds. RESULTS:We found only tandem repeat deletion polymorphisms of the chicken PRNP ORF in the 4 chicken breeds including 106 Dekalb White, 100 Ross, 98 Ogolgye and 100 Korean native chickens. In addition, the distribution of chicken insertion/deletion polymorphisms was significantly different among the 4 chicken breeds. Finally, we found significant differences in the number of PRNP SNPs between prion disease-susceptible species and prion disease-resistant species. Notably, chickens lack SNPs in the ORF of the prion protein. CONCLUSION:In this study, we found that the absence of SNPs in the chicken PRNP ORF is a notable feature of animals with perfect resistant to prion disease.

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