Project Number: 6226-32000-012-21
Project Type: Trust

Start Date: Oct 01, 2009
End Date: Sep 30, 2014

Objective:
Identify and characterize differentially expressed serum proteins and peptides associated with poultry metabolic skeletal problems such as femoral head separation (FHS) and tibial dyschondroplasia (TD).

Approach:
Sera collected from FHS and TD-affected chickens, along with normal sera, will be analyzed to identify differentially occurring proteins and peptides. Low abundance proteins will be enriched while high abundance will be depleted using a library of hexapeptide-based affinity matrix called ProteoMiner. The proteins will be analyzed by 2D gel electrophoresis and characterized by peptide mass fingerprints and tandem mass spectrometry. The peptides will be enriched by solid phase extraction on C18 magnetic beads and analyzed by matrix-assisted laser desorption-time of flight (MALDI-TOF) mass spectrometry. The characterization of the peptides will be done using tandem mass spectrometry. The identification of both proteins and peptides will be done using MASCOT and/or other similar data base search.