Determination of genetic diversity in turkish commercial chicken lines by using LEI0258 microsatellite marker related to Marek's disease

Marek's disease (MD) is contagious disease of domestic chickens induced by Marek's disease virus and is on of the important complex diseases causing the threat for world poultry industry. Marek's disease causes approximately $1 billion economic looses in world poultry industry. Enhancing genetic resistance to MD is an attractive method to augment MD vaccines. The vaccine control method is able to protect against MD, but they don't prevent MDV replication and spread. Because of vaccine inadequacy, the other method for avoiding from MD is to breed the chickens that are genetically resistant to MD. The aim of this study is that the identification of the Turkish commercial pure chicken lines by using LEI0258 microsatellite marker related to MD. The total of 350 chickens (30 samples for each line; 11 lines x30=330, and 20 control samples) were sampled. The mean number of alleles (Na), effective number of alleles (Ne), observed heterozygosity (Ho), expected heterozygosity (He), and Fıs values over all population were estimated as Na=39, Ne=16.27, Ho=0.627, He=0.939, Fıs=0.276, respectively. Pair wise gene flow (Nm) was estimated as 1 among populations for each 2 generations. Most of the genetic variation was present among populations rather than within populations. We believe that our results will assist the breeding programs to improve the resistant parent genotypes to diseases in poultry industry.