STTR Phase I: A Biodetector for Rapid On-Site Screening of Breeder Chickens with High Feed Efficiency

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This Small Business Technology Transfer (STTR) Phase I Project will develop an immunosensor for rapid, on-site identification of feed efficiency (FE) in breeder chickens. The proposing company's industrial partner has developed a pedigree line of breeder chickens whose progeny is one of the major lines of broilers used commercially in the U.S. Individual birds from the same male-line and fed the same diet exhibit approximately 20% difference in FE. Prior work has determined that at least 18 plasma proteins are differentially expressed in low and high FE birds. This Phase I project will focus on developing a low cost assay using a capillary column based bioseparator / bioreactor (for protein capture) and an optical detection cell (for protein detection) with the sensitivity necessary to rapidly differentiate protein expression levels in low and high FE broilers. The commercial application of this project will be on the poultry industry. Companies breeding elite lines of broilers will find substantial savings in feed and labor costs with the proposed device.