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Context

The objectives of genetic selection must evolve to meet the challenges of sustainable development of animal production in the face of a changing environmental and societal context. The resilience and longevity of animals in addition to their production potential are therefore key elements to consider.

Missions

Our missions are to identify and optimize innovative genetic improvement strategies to promote and increase the multi-performance (production and fitness) of laying hens, allowing the development of more resilient breeding systems in the face of different hazards, in line with societal demand and agro-ecological transition. This implies a very strong evolution of research questions and methods, with the consideration of complex and heterogeneous data relating to the animal (ranging from its genome to its behavior) and its breeding environment (climate, geographic location…).

Research areas

Our research falls into three areas:

• Analysis of the genetic determinism of important traits to be improved to meet the challenges of the agroecological transition through breeding programs for laying hens: genetic and epigenetic components of the flexibility of energy and calcium reserves; egg-laying behavior; trade-offs between well-being, health and production.
• The integration of structure and function information at the genome scale: study of candidate polymorphisms involved in traits of interest; characterization of specific selection signatures in broilers and layers and in local breeds; annotation of the hen genome, in particular by identifying new variants and long non-coding regulatory RNAs.
• Contributing to the optimization or design of selection programs taking into account advances on the first two axes: inclusion of "new" traits; use of genomic information.

Expertise and skills

To carry out our various research projects, the team has recognized expertise, based on broad and complementary skills in animal science (trait measurements, tissue sampling), modeling and quantitative genetics (analysis of genetic parameters, GWAS and QTL), genomics, statistics and bioinformatics (genome annotation, genotyping, sequencing and data analyses) and in molecular and cellular biology (characterization of genes, analyzes of the regulation of their expression and functions).

Leader

Christian Diot
Tél. : (+33)2 23 48 54 61
Courriel : Christian Diot

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