Brief Summary of Minutes of Annual Meeting

Abridged version of minutes from annual business meeting

Welcome, introductions, review of the agenda (Sue Lamont)–

• Briefed the group about the importance of a concise annual report that clearly illustrates how NC1170 facilitates productive, cooperative research activities.
• Prompted members to begin thinking about the next proposal and noted that responsibility to write the proposal should be rotated among members. Noted that objectives will need to be tweaked to be more contemporary, while retaining the focus on understanding genetics.

NRSP8 Update (Huaijun Zhou):

• Informed group that seed funds are available to support very small projects; e.g., have invested in creation of stable cell lines that will be available to members
• Encouraged members to seek support for preliminary data generation.

Bioinformatics (Fiona McCarthy):

• Noted that they are still providing a curated QTLs database.
• Funds support other resources, including OMIA (Online Mendelian Inheritance in Animals), and noted that DBSNP stopped supporting animal SNPs.

USDA Update (Frank Siewerdt, NIFA Representative):

• Sees a couple of trends in funding: 1) Insuring support for underrepresented scientist groups, especially for new investigators; 2) Movement toward integrated projects; integration needs to be meaningful for both teaching and extension.
• There is a push against good science that never leaves the shelf.

Group Moved to hold next annual meeting in conjunction with PAG in San Diego: 

Overview: Across stations, significant research progress was in the areas of 1) the genetic and functional basis disease resistance mechanisms, 2) heat stress and responses to climate change, 3) genetics and biology of muscle disorders in chicken and turkeys, 4) novel genomic resources for annotation and gene editing, 5) gut microbiota of poultry, and 6) development of new computational tools and approaches.

Unique project-related findings:

            Demonstrated that marker assisted selection against ascites is effective and does not affect production traits.

            Improved assembly, nomenclature, and functional annotation of the chicken genome

            Developed genetic panel to assist in breeding lines of chickens that are more resilient chickens to hot climate for production in developing countries

            Developed a novel chicken cell line for in vitro studies

            Identified genes and pathways associated with susceptibility to viral infection

Summaries:

• IA, ADOL and TAES stations maintained research populations to serve as resources for identifying genes, genetic elements and genomic regions of economic importance; as well as defining unique aspects of chicken genomic architecture. Active collaborations utilizing ISU chicken genetic lines or biological materials include H Zhou, UC- Davis (NDV and heat-stress response). TAES maintained flock of Greater Prairie Chickens for fertile egg production with the aim of isolating primordial germ cells for use in gene editing studies.
• Multiple groups are involved in investigating the muscle biology of chicken, focusing on wooden breast disorder, including DE, TAES, AR, and AZ stations, while MN and MI stations focused on turkey breast muscle development and satellite cells.
• Various groups carried out projects focusing on the genetics of infectious diseases in poultry. VA and GA investigated physiological changes during Eimeria maxima RVC investigated host genomes and microbiomes to develop complementary strategies to control Campylobacter infection. COH is developing genetic maps of the MHC region. ADOL investigated the underlying genetic and epigenetic factors to control MDV. AR studied BCO and lameness in broilers. CA and IA stations are working together on enhancing resistance to NDV virus.
• Heat stress is an important issue facing the poultry industry and there is intensive research on this topic among NC1170 members. MI and MN stations are focusing on muscle development and thermal challenge in turkeys, whereas CA and IA are focusing on heat-stress in chicken. GA studied effect of heat stress on sexual development of Eimeria maxima

 Outputs and ACTIVITIES:

Publications: NC1170 members published 85 reports, and peer-reviewed articles and 8 book chapters in the year 2020. Additionally, six graduate and one undergraduate theses/dissertations were compiled in 2020. See Appendix for complete list, including those representing collaborations across members and entities of NC1170.

Funds: The NC1170 committee leveraged external funding of $29,210,126 from funders such as NIFA, NSF and private industry, with much of that amount resulting from collaborations among stations. This is likely an underestimate as numbers were not reported by all members.

Workshop: Members from four collaborating institutions organized and managed the group’s annual poultry workshop, which was delivered virtually for the first time due to the COVID pandemic.

 Milestones: not applicable