Nutritional studies with Scaleless chickens: I. The Sulphur-Containing Amino Acids

Abstract

Young birds homozygous for the recessive gene, sc, had a significantly lower requirement than their normally feathered siblings for the sulphur-containing amino-acids, methionine and cystine. When fed a synthetic diet lacking in methionine, feathered birds showed the expected abrupt decrease in weight gain while Scaleless birds grew at a rate equivalent to feathered birds receiving the full diet. Scaleless birds receiving the full diet exceeded feathered birds in weight gain during the first part of the feeding trial but they required more food per gram of gain. Between Scaleless groups those fed the deficient diet dropped behind those on full diet in gain after 3 weeks but even after 6 weeks these did not differ in other respects. On the other hand among normal birds those receiving the deficient diet were higher in heat output and had relatively larger thyroid and adrenal glands than those receiving the full diet.Differences between the two phenotypes are accounted for by (1) the difference in nutritive requirements determined by feather growth, and (2) the resultant differences in heat loss which accounted for the increase in heat output, packed cell volume and heart, thyroid and adrenal gland size of Scaleless birds.The use of mutants such as Scaleless in studies concerned with requirements for specific physiological or growth purposes is suggested.