Zhongmei  Hong , Xiaofang  Lin

Tropical Animal Medicine Center, Hainan Institute of Tropical Agricultural Resources, Sanya, 572024, Hainan, China
Author    Correspondence author
Biological Evidence, 2025, Vol. 15, No. 2   
Received: 08 Feb., 2025    Accepted: 09 Mar., 2025    Published: 21 Jan., 2025

This is an open access article published under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.

The domestic chicken (Gallus gallus domesticus) is one of the most common domestic animals around us. It is widely distributed around the world, closely related to human life, and is an animal with high economic value. In recent years, with the development of high-throughput sequencing technology, scientists have found that the impact of "structural changes" in the genome (such as large changes such as duplication and deletion of gene segments) on the domestication and trait evolution of chickens may be more important than we thought. Starting from the structure of the chicken genome, this article explains the types of variation, detection technology, and its important role in evolution and artificial selection. The article focuses on the origin mechanism of SV, the distribution differences among different chicken species, and its impact on gene expression, phenotype, and domestication traits (such as feather color, comb shape, growth rate, and egg-laying ability). Finally, a specific case, the duplication variation of the TBC1D1 gene region in broilers, is used to explore the mechanism of SV in the rapid growth trait of broilers. At the end of the article, we look forward to the application prospects of emerging technologies such as single-cell analysis, pan-genome construction, and genomic selection in SV research and poultry breeding. Structural variation is an important genetic basis in the process of domesticated chickens. In-depth research on the mechanisms and functions contained therein will help reveal the genetic nature of complex traits and promote the development of precision breeding.

Structural variation; Chicken genome; Domestication and evolution; Gene regulation; Genomic selection