Table 7.

Effects of in ovo delivery of carvacrol at embryonic day (E)17.5 on expression of immune-related genes in the yolk sac membrane (expressed as fold change relative to the saline-injected group at E19.5) of broiler chickens measured at E19.5, hatch and day 14.

Treatment	Age	IL-1β	IL-2	IL-4	IL-8	IFN-γ1	TNF-α	TGF-β	NF-κB	CD3δ	BU-1	IgM	Muc-2
Control		0.76	0.63	0.91	0.65	1.00a	0.79	0.80	0.80	0.61	0.67	0.61	0.78
Carvacrol		0.70	0.57	0.72	0.49	0.23b	0.83	0.84	0.94	0.86	0.64	0.76	0.71
SEM		0.10	0.20	0.17	0.18	0.13	0.09	0.08	0.06	0.08	0.28	0.19	0.13
Control	E19.5	1.00	1.00	1.00	1.00a	-	1.00	1.00	1.00	1.00	1.00	1.00	1.00
	Hatch	0.52	0.25	0.82	0.31b	1.00	0.57	0.61	0.60	0.22	0.34	0.22	0.56
Carvacrol	E19.5	0.93	0.87	0.75	0.91a	-	1.20	1.15	1.28	1.52	1.03	1.31	0.89
	Hatch	0.48	0.26	0.68	0.07c	0.23	0.46	0.53	0.60	0.20	0.25	0.21	0.54
SEM		0.15	0.28	0.24	0.25	-	0.12	0.11	0.08	0.11	0.40	0.27	0.18
P-value
Treatment		0.59	0.92	0.12	0.14	<0.001	0.88	0.90	0.12	0.34	0.87	0.16	0.90
Age		<0.001	<0.001	0.23	<0.001	-	<0.001	<0.001	<0.001	<0.001	0.001	0.02	0.01
Treatment x Age		0.98	0.66	0.71	0.05	-	0.35	0.27	0.07	0.10	0.49	0.45	0.61

IL-1β, 2, 4, 8: Interleukin 1β, 2, 4, 8; IFN-γ: Interferon γ; TNF-α: Tumor necrosis factor α; TGF-β: Transforming growth factor β; NF-κB: Nuclear factor κ B; CD3δ: CD3 δ subunit of T-cell Receptor Complex, present on T-cells and NK-cells; BU-1: Transmembrane protein of B-cells and a subset of macrophages; IgM: Immunoglobulin M; Muc-2: Mucin 2.

¹No expression of IFN-γ was detected at E19.5.

^a-cLSMeans within a column and factor lacking a common superscript differ (P ≤ 0.05).

The gene expression values of the control group at E19.5 (at hatch for IFN-γ) were assigned an arbitrary value of 1.00 and the other groups were expressed relative to this value. Main effects for age are shown in Figure 6. Results are expressed as LSmeans ± SEM.