Direct allele introgression into pure chicken breeds using Sire Dam Surrogate (SDS) mating

Poultry is the most abundant livestock species with over 60 billion chickens raised globally per year. The majority of chicken are produced from commercial flocks, however many indigenous chicken breeds play an important role in rural economies as they are well adapted to local environmental and scavenging conditions. The ability to make precise genetic changes in chicken will permit the validation of genetic variants responsible for climate adaptation and disease resilience, and the transfer of beneficial alleles between breeds. Here, we generate a novel inducibly sterile surrogate host chicken. Introducing donor genome edited primordial germ cells into the sterile male and female host embryos produces adult chicken carrying only exogenous germ cells. Subsequent direct mating of the surrogate hosts, Sire Dam Surrogate (SDS) mating, recreates the donor chicken breed carrying the edited allele in a single generation. We demonstrate the introgression and validation of two feather trait alleles, Dominant white and Frizzle into two pure chicken breeds using the SDS surrogate hosts. Chicken are a biological model and an important agricultural animal. Here, the authors demonstrate that pure breed genome edited chicks can be produced for any chicken breed by direct mating of sterile surrogate hosts carrying donor genome edited germ cells.