Adiponectin Gene Is Expressed in Multiple Tissues in the Chicken: Food Deprivation Influences Adiponectin Messenger Ribonucleic Acid Expression

Adiponectin is a cytokine hormone originally found to be se-creted exclusively by white adipose tissue. However, recent evidences suggest that adiponectin is also produced in brown adipose tissue and skeletal muscle. The present study inves-tigated the expressionof adiponectinmRNA invarious tissues in the chicken. We also studied the effect of food deprivation on adiponectin gene expression in adipose tissue, liver, ante-rior pituitary gland, and diencephalon in the chicken. The open reading frame of chicken adiponectin cDNA consists of 735 nucleotides that were 65–68 % homologous to various mammalian adiponectin cDNAs. The deduced amino acid se-quence of chicken adiponectin contains 22 glycine-X-Y re-peats (in which X and Y represent any amino acid) at the N-terminal end as found in the mammalian adiponectin. By RT-PCR and Northern analysis, we detected chicken adi