Chicken (Gallus gallus)

The domesticated chicken is a modern descendant of dinosaurs. It is the premier non-mammalian model organism and provides a new perspective on vertebrate genome evolution.

The domesticated chicken is a modern descendant of dinosaurs. It is the premier non-mammalian model organism with a large international research community dedicated to developing and sharing information. The chicken provides a new perspective on vertebrate genome evolution. Its genome is composed of approximately one billion base pairs and approximately 20,000-23,000 genes organized in 39 chromosome pairs. Although it shares a similar number of genes, the chicken’s genome is only about a third the size of mammalian genomes. This reflects a reduction in interspersed repeat content, pseudogenes and duplications. There are hundreds of mutant chicken stocks and inbred lines available for study. Research using the chicken as a model organism has resulted in important discoveries in virology, immunology, oncology, vertebrate development, genetics and evolution.