QTL analysis of body composition and metabolic traits in an intercross between chicken lines divergently selected for growth

The high- and low-growth lines of chickens have been developed from a single founder population by divergent selection for body weight at 56 days of age for more than 40 generations. The two lines show a ninefold difference in body weight at selection age and several interesting correlated selection responses such as altered body composition and metabolic differences. We have generated a reciprocal intercross comprising >800 F2 birds. In a previous study, we reported the detection of 13 quantitative trait loci (QTLs) affecting growth. Here we report QTLs for body composition (fat deposition, muscle development), weight of internal organs, and metabolic traits (plasma concentrations of glucose, insulin, cholesterol, glucagon, triglycerides, and IGF-I). Most of the QTLs with convincing statistical support mapped in the vicinity of growth QTLs. One of the most interesting observations was that the type of reciprocal cross had highly significant effects on body weight at hatch and on plasma concentrations of glucose, cholesterol, insulin, and IGF-I, but it had no significant effect on body weight at 56 days of age. The reciprocal cross explained between 15 and 35% of the phenotypic variance for weight at hatch and for plasma concentrations of glucose and insulin. The observed pattern indicated that these effects were caused by maternal effects or by genetic differences in mitochondrial DNA.