The Use of Primed in situ Synthesis (PRINS) to Analyze Nucleolar Organizer Regions (NORs) and Telomeric DNA Sequences in the Domestic Chicken Genome

One of the most often analyzed avian genomes is the domestic chicken genome (Gallus domesticus) whose diploid number is 2n=78. In the chicken karyotype, similarly to other birds, there is a group of microchromosomes for which the determination of morphology and banding pattern is impossible using classic cytogenetics methods. The aim of this study was to evaluate telomeric and rDNA repetitive sequences in the chicken genome by the PRINS technique as an alternative method to fluorescence in situ hybridization. This is the first report on the application of the PRINS method to locate these repetitive sequences in the chicken nuclei and metaphase chromosomes.