Investigating Mareks Disease

If you’re like most people, you’ve recently eaten chicken. This is because poultry is the most popular meat consumed in the U.S., and this trend is projected to grow to 2020 and beyond. Primarily due to advanced poultry breeding programs, tremendous progress in producing chickens has been made to meet the growing demands of consumers.

Several major issues confront the poultry industry today. With high-density chicken rearing, controlling infectious diseases are critical for sustaining economic viability, maintaining public confidence, and enhancing animal welfare. Among poultry diseases, Marek’s disease (MD), a T cell cancer caused by the Marek's disease virus (MDV), continues to be at or near the top of the list of concerns. Alarm about MD is enhanced by the unpredictable and spontaneous vaccine breaks that result in devastating losses to poultry farms.

The main control strategy for MD is vaccination. And while these vaccines effectively prevent disease, they do not prevent viral infection or shedding, which allows MDV to evolve to higher virulence. Thus, there is a need for alternative control measures.

The long-term focus of Dr. Hans Cheng and his lab has been to increase genetic resistance to MD as one sustainable alternative. To accomplish this task, large quantities of DNA or RNA are sequenced in order to characterize the genome or the transcripts of the individual. This information is then analyzed to identify genes and pathways that confer MD resistance, which can be used in poultry breeding programs. To be successful with this approach, an effective way to analyze the large amounts of data being collected is needed and this is where Cheng says the High Performance Computing Center (HPCC) is utilized.

Many of Cheng’s students have come into the iCER office to take advantage of the one on one consulting provided for HPCC users. “It’s just been wonderful to have this facility here,” Cheng adds, “MSU is very lucky to have this overall service facility that’s provided.”