The aim of this study was to assess the impact of oocyte competence on subsequent fertility. Based on knowledge already accessible in mammals and on bioinformatics tools including the chicken genome sequence, we focused on the expression of genes involved in the processes of fertilization and of early embryo development. The study was performed using two complementary approaches, a descriptive study of standard laying hens and then a differential study performed with hens from experimental lines expressing broad variations of achieved fertility :approximately 20per cent.A differential kinetic study is performed on INRA lines selected on the basis of their fertility potential in purpose of hopefully access gene markers of fertility performance.
Data processing
The data were normalized with the gcrma algorithm (Irizarry et al., 2003), available in the Bioconductor package (Gentleman and Carey, 2002).
