Jungle fowl-domestic fowl relationships: a use of DNA fingerprinting.

There has been a long and continuing interest among poultry breeders and scientists in relationships of domestic fowl with their jungle fowl ancestor. Recent commercial practices in poultry breeding have greatly changed and improved the meat and egg stocks available for the production of food. There is concern, however, that artificial selection for traits of economic importance has caused a narrowing of the genetic base and subsequent reduction in genetic variability. Because continued progress in the achievement of increased growth or egg production depends heavily on genetic variability, its present status is of interest. Current techniques in molecular biology allow estimations to be made of genetic distance among populations. This paper reviews DNA fingerprinting in poultry using results from this technique to survey genetic diversity among jungle fowl, domestic fowl representative of stocks from several decades ago and today's commercial broilers and layers. The genetic distance between wild jungle fowl and layers has been found to be similar to that between wild jungle fowl and broilers. Within the two types of modern commercial fowl there is less genetic diversity among broiler than layer stocks.