A deleted retroviral insertion at the ev21-K complex locus in Indonesian chickens

Very poor feather development has been observed in chickens of the Nunukan strain, originating from Indonesia. The wing of the newly hatched chick does not show any primary or covert feathers; this phenotype will be referred to as very-late feathering (VLF). As adults, chickens are feathered but tail feathers are short and fragile. An experimental population was set up at the National Institute of Agronomic Research (INRA), Jouy-en-Josas, from one Nunukan male and four Nunukan females. Preliminary observations did not support the hypothesis of a sex-linked dominant mode of inheritance for the VLF phenotype. A restriction fragment length polymorphism (RFLP) study using five restriction enzymes and two probes, RAV-2 and endogenous virus (ev) ev21-int specific for the endogenous viral locus ALVE21, showed the presence of the expected 3' junction fragments for the ev21 occupied site but failed to reveal the expected 5' junction fragments for ev21 in Nunukan chickens. The unoccupied site corresponded to the ev21 unoccupied repeat (UR) of type a (URa). A deletion in the 5' region of the provirus and of the insertion site was indicated by the RFLP analysis and confirmed by a PCR study. Primers were designed in order to amplify a 5' junction fragment specific to the modified ev21 found in the Nunukan chickens. The sequence of this amplified product showed that the deletion started 652 bp upstream of the insertion site of ev21 and ended within the pol gene of the viral genome. This deletion represents a new allele, OSD, at the ev21 insertion site (locus ALVE21), that appears insufficient to produce a complete virus. Current data do not show a clear causal relationship between OSD and the VLF phenotype. The presence of OSD may be required but is not in itself sufficient to obtain the VLF phenotype. The genetic relationships between OSD and the altered feathering phenotype of Nunukan chickens will be investigated further in families segregating for the VLF phenotype, using the locus-specific PCR test developed as part of this study.