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. 2026 Jun 27;105(11):107354. doi: 10.1016/j.psj.2026.107354

Multi-omics analyses reveal new insights into the genetic mechanisms of external genitalia erectile dysfunction in male geese

Bincheng Tang a,b,c,d,1, Shenqiang Hu a,b,c,1, Qingyuan Ouyang a,b,c,1, Xin Zhang a,b,c, Jiwei Hu a,b,c, Liang Li a,b,c, Jiwen Wang a,b,c,⁎
PMCID: PMC13449658  PMID: 42526090

Abstract

Among poultry species, only waterfowl (e.g., goose and duck) possess the external genitalia. Normal erection of the external genitalia in male geese is directly related to mating capability, but its underlying genetic mechanisms remain elusive. In this study, we conducted a multi-omics study on male geese with normal erection (NE) and erectile dysfunction (ED) external genitalia phenotypic, to identify key candidate genes and main molecular networks contributing to external genitalia development differences. Here, we present a comprehensive genome resource for male geese, including a high-coverage (20×) whole genome of 259 samples from Sichuan White Goose × Lande Goose F2 resource population. The genome-wide association study (GWAS) analyses of NE and ED male geese indicated that PCDH7, TFPI, CALCRL, HIBCH, COL3A1, and CAVIN2 may be related to the differences in erectile function of external genitalia. At the transcriptomic level, we identified 318, 629, 2482, and 901 differentially expressed genes (DEGs) in the hypothalamus, pituitary gland, testis, and external genitalia cartilage between NE and ED groups, respectively. Further analysis demonstrated that PCDH7 was identified by both SNP-GWAS and transcriptomic analysis. Integrated with transcriptome data, it was revealed that PCDH7 involved in the function of male goose external genitalia cartilage development may be through MAPK signaling pathway. Collectively, our multi-faceted analysis suggests that PCDH7 affects male geese external genitalia erection may be through the MAPK signaling pathway. Our findings not only provide new insights into the development of external genitalia but also contribute to improving the reproductive performance of male geese.

Keywords: Goose, External genitalia, Erectile dysfunction, Genetic mechanism

Introduction

During the evolution of birds, ∼ 97% of all extant bird species lack an intromittent external genitalia, only ∼ 3% of male birds retain the external genitalia capable of intromission (Hackett et al., 2008; Herrera et al., 2013). In poultry, the terrestrial fowl such as chicken generally lack an intromittent external genitalia, whereas the waterfowl such as goose and duck retain a well-developed external genitalia (Patricia L. R. Brennan, 2008). In waterfowl, during the mating (internal fertilization) process, the male inserts its external genitalia into the female’s reproductive tract to deliver sperm (Sanger et al., 2015). A previous study demonstrated that the developmental status of external genitalia could significantly affect the sperm quality and fertilization rate of male goose (He et al., 2025). Moreover, the normal erection of external genitalia is a prerequisite for natural mating in male goose. In our practical work involving goose breeding and production, it was frequently observed that some male geese exhibited the external genital erectile dysfunction (ED), which in turn led to their inability to complete natural mating normally. At present, information about the phenotypic and genetic causes of ED remains scarce in male geese.

Over the past decade, multi-omics sequencing has been widely used to identify functional genes and main pathways related to various phenotypic traits (Li et al., 2020; Gao et al., 2024). For instance, through integrated whole-genome resequencing and RNA-seq analysis, it was revealed that PDGFD is a causal gene for sheep tail fat deposition (Lv et al., 2022). In addition, multi-omics analysis revealed that variations in the regulatory regions of AOX1 and ADAMTSL3 genes be associated with the lodging traits in chickens (Guo et al., 2020). In ducks, Zhou et al. found that a splicing change in the MITF gene may led to accounting for white duck down feathers (Zhou et al., 2018). Furthermore, research by Tang et al. indicated that the abnormal development of the external genitalia in male geese may be strongly related to the PLCB1 gene and wnt signaling pathway (Tang et al., 2022). However, the key candidate genes and genetic mechanisms that regulate the external genitalia ED are still unclear in male geese.

Currently, integrated whole genome resequencing and RNA-seq have been widely used in identifying the candidate genes related to poultry reproduction traits (Bai et al., 2020; Ouyang et al., 2020). Moreover, the availability of the chromosome-level goose genomes causes it possible to explain the genetic basis of male geese external genitalia traits at the genome level (Lu et al., 2015; Zhao et al., 2022). Nevertheless, the genes responsible for the male goose external genitalia erectile dysfunction has not been explored using integrated whole genome resequencing and transcriptome sequencing. In this work, we analyzed the external genitalia phenotypes and morphological structure of male geese in our previously constructed large-scale Sichuan White Goose (SC, Anser cygnoides) × Lande Goose (LD, Anser anser) F2 resource population. Subsequently, we first conduct GWAS analysis based on SC × LD F2 resource population genome resequencing to identify genetic variations and key genes associated with ED of the external genitalia in male geese. Furthermore, we conducted multi-tissue RNA-seq analyses on the hypothalamus, pituitary gland, testis, and external genitalia cartilage of NE and ED geese. Our experiment aims to identify hub genes and regulatory mechanism of external genitalia erection in male geese, which will contribute to further exploring the genetic basis of male geese external genitalia development characteristics.

Materials and methods

Ethics approval

All experimental procedures that involved in animal manipulation have been reviewed and approved by the Sichuan Agricultural University Animal Ethical and Welfare Committee under the Approval No. 20160067.

Animals and sample collection

In this study, a total of 259 male geese from our previously constructed SC × LD F2 resource population were raised at the Waterfowl Breeding Experimental Farm of Sichuan Agricultural University (Ya’an, Sichuan, China). In the management of experimental geese, they are given free access to food and water under natural light and temperature conditions. The external genitalia phenotypes of all male geese were as recorded at 30 weeks of age, including the external genitalia basal diameter (BD), natural length (NL), straightening length (SL), and spiral number (SN), as well as whether the external genitalia are covered with acupuncture. At 10 weeks of age, blood samples were collected from 259 male geese (venipuncture from the vein under the wing) and quickly frozen at -80°C until DNA extraction. Male geese showing normal external genital morphology but erection dysfunction at the age of 30 weeks (body maturation) were categorized as the ED group. In the present study, the criteria for identifying NE and ED phenotypes in male geese were defined as follows: First, the external genitalia of male geese were exposed via dorsoventral massage. Second, the base and spiral structure of the external genitalia were visually inspected. Individuals with enlarged genitalia bases and stretched spiral structures were classified into the NE group, while those with atrophied genitalia bases and unchanged spiral structures were assigned to the ED group. At the same time, 3 male geese randomly selected from the ED and external genital normal erection (NE) groups were humanely slaughtered to collect the hypothalamus, pituitary gland, testis, and external genitalia cartilage for transcriptome sequencing, respectively.

Histological analysis

In this study, external genitalia cartilage of 3 male geese from each of the NE and ED group were subjected to histological analysis. Firstly, fix the freshly collected external genitalia cartilage with 4% formaldehyde at room temperature for 72 h, and perform rapid decalcification treatment on the base cartilage tissue. Afterward, it was dehydrated through a series of ethanol solutions with different concentrations and finally transferred to xylene before being embedded in paraffin. The fixed external genitalia cartilage was cut into slices approximately 4-μm thick slices and stained with Safranin O and Fast Green (SO&FG). Observation and photography of SO&FG-stained slices under the camera microscope BA410-Digital (MOTIC CHINA GROUP CO., LTD. Xiamen, China). Finally, measurement of histological parameters of external genitalia cartilage using Image Pro Plus 6.0 software, including the cartilage matrix area and number of chondrocytes.

Whole-genome resequencing and variant calling

In our study, total genomic DNA was extracted from blood using the DNeasy Blood and Tissue Kit (Qiagen, Valencia, CA, USA). Then, the Qubit 2.0 fluorescence analyzer (Thermo Fisher Technology, Wilmington, Delaware, USA) and agarose gel electrophoresis are used to evaluate the quality of DNA. A total of 259 male geese were re-sequenced on the Illumina NovaSeq 6000 platform (Novogene Co. Ltd., Tianjin, China), with sequencing depths exceeding 20× genome coverage for each sample. The re-sequencing raw data was detected by FastQC software, and based on the quality of the raw data, NGS QC Toolkit was used to perform quality control on the raw sequencing data, removing residual primers and linker sequences (Patel and Jain 2012).

Next, we compared the quality-controlled data with the recently assembled chromosome-level Sichuan White Goose genome(PRJNA801885)using the parameter "bwa-k 40-M-R" of the BWA-MEM software (Li and Durbin 2009). The mapping data were converted to bam format using SAMtools software, and unmapped and non-uniquely mapped reads were filtered out (Li et al., 2009). The variant calling is based on the optimal workflow recommended by GATK software (v4.1.7.0) (McKenna et al., 2010). In short, the HaplotypeCaller and GVCF models in GATK software was used to call SNPs for each sample. To understand the comprehensive variation among all samples, we used a combined GVCF file for the combined genotyping step, with the filter parameters: QD < 2.0 || MQ < 40.0 || FS > 60.0 || SOR > 3.0 || MQRankSum < 12.5 || ReadPosRankSum < 8.0. Simultaneously, the SNPs filter parameters as follows: deletion (MR) >0.1, sequencing depth (SD) < 4, minor allele frequency (MAF) < 0.05 or GQ < 5, and the remaining SNPs were used for GWAS analysis. Finally, functional annotation of identified SNPs using ANNOVAR software (Wang et al., 2010).

Genome-wide association analysis

The mixed linear model (MLM) program implemented in the Genome-wide Efficient Mixed-model Association (GEMMA) software was conducted to genome-wide association analysis (GWAS) (Zhou and Stephens 2012). In this study, the identified SNPs with MR ≤ 0.1, SD ≥ 4, and MAF ≥ 0.05 from all geese for GWAS analysis. The mode is as follows: Y = Xα + Sβ + Kµ + e. Among them, Y, X, S, K, αβ, Kμ, and e represents the phenotype, the genotype, the structural matrix, the relative kinship matrix, the fixed effects, the random effects, and the normal residual distribution, respectively. The S-matrix corrected for population structure was constructed based on PC1, PC2, and PC3, whereas the K-matrix was constructed through a simple matching coefficient matrix. The manhattan plot and quantile (Q-Q) of GWAS results were visualized using the CMplot software package in R software. In this study, 1e−6 was set as the threshold values associated with the significance and potential of the trait, and the variation information was annotated into the gene name.

RNA extraction and transcriptome analysis

Briefly, total RNA of different tissues was extracted using the Trizol Kit (Invitrogen, Santa Clara, CA, USA) following the manufacturer’s instructions. All the RNA samples undergo integrity testing before library construction. Sequencing of mRNA library was performed using Illumina Nova-PE150 (Novogene Co. Ltd., Beijing, China). The raw data were performed to quality check and were filtered by using fastQC software. Then, the clean reads data were compared to the Sichuan White Goose genome (PRJNA801885) using the Hisat2 software (version: 2.2.1) (Kim et al., 2015). Using SAMtools (version 1.10) to convert the SAM file generated into a BAM file and sort it (Li et al., 2009). Subsequently, featureCounts (version 1.6.0) was used for calculated the expression of each transcript and the counts (Liao et al., 2014). The differentially expressed genes (DEGs) were identified by DESeq2 package (| log2Fold change | > 1 and p-value < 0.05). The GO and KEGG functional enrichment analysis were calculated using KOBAS3.0 database (Bu et al., 2021). Using STRING 11.5 database (http://string-db.org/) to analyze network interaction relationships, and using Cystoscope software (v3.7.1) for network visualization.

Weighted gene co-expression network analysis (WGCNA)

The “WGCNA” R package was utilized to identify modules with highly similar co-expression patterns. Samples were first clustered and the optimal soft threshold (β) was determined to be 11. The parameters were carefully set as follows: the minModuleSize was set to 30 and the mergeCutHeight was set to 0.25. Next, we chose an optimal soft threshold to convert the correlation matrix into an adjacency matrix, which was applied to generate a topological overlap matrix (TOM). Using the TOM-based dissimilarity indicators, positive or negative correlations of genes with similar expression patterns were clustered into the same modules through average linkage hierarchical clustering. Moreover, the correlation between module eigengenes and gene expression patterns was assessed by module membership (MM). Unless otherwise specified, other calculations were performed using the default parameters implemented in the WGCNA package. We performed cluster analysis to identify gene modules, and constructed a dendrogram via hierarchical clustering to calculate the correlation between module eigengenes and external genitalia phenotypes.

Statistics analysis

The experimental data were analyzed by using the SPSS 26.0 software (v 26.0; SPSS Inc., United States). The means of the BD, NL, SL, and SN for external genitalia between NE and ED through ANOVA testing. Furthermore, we analyzed significance of different traits between NE and ED through t-tests, and when p < 0.05, it is recognized that there is a statistically significant difference.

Results

Phenotypic and histological structure difference of the male goose external genitalia between NE and ED in the F2 population

At the morphological level, the base of the external genitalia from NE are enlarged and bright, while that from ED is not enlarged and in an atrophic state (Fig. 1A). Compared with the ED group, the external genitalia base diameter (BD), natural length (NL), straightening length (SL), and spiral number (SN) was significantly higher in the NE group (p < 0.01, Fig. 1B). At the histological structure level, the cartilage at the base of the external genitalia from both NE and ED is composed of cartilage matrix. However, compared with ED group, the external genitalia cartilage of NE is fully developed, and the cartilage matrix area is significantly larger (Fig. 1C). Histological parameters analysis further showed that the area of cartilage matrix and the number of chondrocytes at the base of external genitalia were significantly higher in NE than in ED group (Fig. 1D).

Fig. 1.

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Phenotypic and histomorphological analysis of the male goose external genitalia between the normal erection (NE) and erectile dysfunction (ED) groups. A, The external genitalia morphology between NE and ED. The black box represents the cartilage base of the external genitalia, R and L represent the left and right sides of the cartilage base, respectively; B, Comparison of external genitalia morphological parameters between NE and ED; C, Morphological structure of cartilage base of the external genitalia between NE and ED (40 ×, 200 ×), respectively; D, Cartilage matrix area and number of chondrocytes between NE and ED, respectively.

Identification of candidate genes regulating the male goose external genitalia erection through GWAS analysis

High-quality re-sequencing data were generated for 259 male geese were re-sequenced at a depth an average depth of ∼ 26.70× (Additional file 1: Table S1). In this study, there were 7 SNPs significant at the 5% genome-wide level (p < 4.15e−9), and 79 SNPs potentially (p <1.07e−7) associated to external genitalia erection of male geese, involving multiple genes on chromosomes 4 (Chr4: 21369589, PCDH7; Chr4: 68037389, CCSER1) and chromosomes 7 (Chr7: 4241011- 12331388; TFPI, CALCRL, HIBCH, COL3A1, and CAVIN2) (Fig. 2A; Table 1). Among them, our results further found that the most significant SNP (chr4:21369589) with erectile dysfunction in the external genitalia of male geese is located in the intron region of the PCDH7 gene (-log10(P)= 11.06) (Fig. 2B-C).

Fig. 2.

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PCDH7 was identified to be strongly associated with the external genitalia erection dysfunction in male goose. A, Manhattan plot of SNP-GWAS, and p < 4.15e-9 and p <1.07e-7 was set as hard threshold (solid line) and soft threshold (dotted line) lines; B, CDG region and LD analysis of PCDH7; C, Genotyping across the candidate regions associated with external genitalia erection (upstream and downstream 2kb regions of PCDH7 gene). Homozygous reference, heterozygous, and homozygous mutant genotypes were marked in yellow, light green, and blue, respectively.

Table 1.

Identification of the SNPs significantly associated with the external genital erection dysfunction in male goose.

Chr Start End -log10(P) Allele Maf Annotation Gene name Distance
4 21369589 21409592 11.06 A/G 0.052 intronic PCDH7 0
7 5847614 5950373 7.56 G/A 0.221 intergenic TFPI 70812
7 5847614 5950373 7.56 G/A 0.221 intergenic CALCRL 2397
7 4785625 4825625 6.96 T/C 0.269 intronic HIBCH 7359
7 5188771 5252117 6.79 T/C 0.125 intronic COL3A1 0
7 4241011 4281011 6.73 G/A 0.052 intergenic CAVIN2 9747
4 68037389 68077389 6.57 A/G 0.078 - CCSER1 0
7 4855124 4895255 6.62 C/G 0.412 intronic PMS1 0
7 5103266 5149609 6.45 C/T 0.307 intronic COL5A2 0
7 12331388 12372046 6.16 G/T 0.069 intronic COL6A2 0
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Note: The symbol "-" indicates that no matching genomic functional region annotation is available for this variant. SNPs with distance = 0 are intragenic variants located within corresponding genes.

Identification of candidate genes regulating the male goose external genital erection through transcriptomic analysis

A total of 560, 437, 242 raw reads and 560, 437, 193 clean reads were obtained through RNA-seq, and the average ratios of Q20 and Q30 were 98.78% and 96.10%. Mapping with the reference genome, the comparison rate was found to be between 90.41% and 95.41%, with an average mapping rate of 94.12% (Additional file 2: Table S2). PCA was utilized to revealed a clear distinction between different groups, and within each group are relatively centralized (Fig. 3A). There were 318 (75 up-regulated, 243 down-regulated), 629 (379 up-regulated, 250 down-regulated), 2482 (478 up-regulated, 2004 down-regulated), and 901 (311 up-regulated, 590 down-regulated) DEGs in the hypothalamus, pituitary gland, testis, and external genitalia cartilage, respectively (Fig. 3B). Functional enrichment analysis revealed that MAPK signaling pathway was commonly enriched by the DEGs in the hypothalamus, pituitary gland, testis, and external genitalia cartilage between NE and ED groups (Fig. 3C-D; Additional file 3: Table S3). Moreover, GO analysis showed that most of DEGs were enriched in cell differentiation (BP), chondrocyte differentiation (BP), and cartilage development (MF) in the external genitalia cartilage (Fig. 3E).

Fig. 3.

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Overview of transcriptome with the external genital erection dysfunction in male goose. A, Transcriptome PCA analysis in NE vs ED-H, NE vs ED-P, NE vs ED-T, and NE vs ED-G groups; B, The number of DEGs in H-P-T-G axi tissues; C, KEGG analysis of DEGs in different tissues between NE and ED group; D, Venn diagram of KEGG pathway enriched by NE vs ED H, NE vs ED P, NE vs ED T, and NE vs ED G groups. E, GO terms enriched by DEGs in NE vs ED-G.

The potential regulatory mechanism of PCDH7 on the male goose external genitalia erection

Venn analysis revealed that PCDH7 were identified as the candidate gene by both the RNA-seq and GWAS analyses (Fig. 4A). The co-expression networks of DEGs in the hypothalamus, pituitary gland, testis, and external genitalia cartilage between NE and ED was constructed through weighted gene co-expression network analysis (WGCNA) (Fig. 4B). Subsequently, further analysis revealed a strong correlation between DEGs enriched in brown modules and the development of external genitalia cartilage development (Fig. 4C; Additional file 4: Table S4). Furthermore, functional analysis revealed that the PPI network was significantly enriched into MAPK signaling pathway (Fig. 4D). Notably, it was postulated that the MAPK signaling pathway may regulate the expression of PCDH7 to control male goose external genitalia base cartilage development (Fig. 4E). The results showed that PCDH7 was a crucial candidate gene associated with ED phenotype in goose external genitalia.

Fig. 4.

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Mechanism analyses of PCDH7 regulation of male goose external genital erection. A, Venn diagrams for identifying potential candidate genes between RNA-seq and GWAS methods; B, Results of weighted gene co-expression network analysis (WGCNA). Hierarchical clustering tree, different colors on the abscissa represent different clustering modules; C, Correlation between modules and phenotypes. The abscissa represents different phenotype groups, and the ordinate represents different modules; D-E, Regulation network construction involved in external genitalia base cartilage development of male geese.

Discussion

The normal development and erection of male external genitalia are a complex trait caused by multiple factors (e.g., hormone, nutritional, gut microbiota, genetic). Under both the natural mating and artificial insemination conditions in commercial goose production, whether the male external genitalia erect normally directly affects the mating ability. The results from morphological analysis indicated that the main site controlling the erection of the male goose is the external genital base, and a significant difference in the cartilage of the external genital base was observed between NE and ED. Moreover, we found that the external genital basal cartilages from both NE and ED contain the mature cartilage matrix, which contains a large number of chondrocytes, and there were observed significant differences in the cartilage matrix area and the chondrocytes number between the two groups (p < 0.05). According to a previous study, chondrocytes play a major role in bone remodeling, mineral balance, and endocrine function as they can simultaneously regulate the activity of osteoblasts and osteoclasts (Tresguerres et al., 2020). The results of our study showed that the area of cartilage matrix and the number of chondrocytes in the NE male geese were significantly higher than those of male geese with ED, indicating that the erectile dysfunction of male geese's external genitalia may be caused by incomplete development of their basal cartilage.

In poultry, domestication and selective breeding have both led to rapid phenotypic evolution, resulting in reduced genetic polymorphism (Wang et al., 2024). Comparative genomic analysis of different phenotypes can identify selective signals and variations in genomic regions, and help reveal the genetic basis of complex traits in animals (Zhou et al., 2018; Li et al., 2020). In this study, the comparative study on the genomes of SC × LD F2 resource population male goose with significant differences in external genitalia phenotypes, we identified key candidate genes affecting the base of the external genitalia development, which is conducive to the study of phenotypic characteristics of male geese's external genitalia. Notably, we confirmed that PCDH7 is a key gene involved in the positive regulation of external genitalia basal cartilage development in male geese by SNP-GWAS. Further, functional enrichment found that candidate genes are mainly involved in AGE-RAGE signaling pathway, neuroactive ligand receptor interaction, positive regulation of chondrocyte differentiation, G protein coupled peptide receptor activity, and cartilage development. These findings strongly indicate that the male goose external genital erection is closely related to the development of the external genital basal cartilage.

In recent years, it has been confirmed that the hypothalamic-pituitary-gonadal (H-P-G) axis regulates the development of the poultry reproductive system by secreting different hormones (Gloux et al., 2019). Omics studies on the H-P-G axis tissues have identified key genes and regulatory network that may play an important role in regulating the poultry reproductive traits. In the present study, 318, 629, 2482, and 901 DEGs were identified in the hypothalamus, pituitary gland, testis, and cartilage of external genitalia between NE and ED, respectively. The above DEGs can be used to explain the important role of the H-P-G axis in regulating the development of male geese external genitalia. To further reveal the functions of these DEGs, functional enrichment analysis performed. Our results showed that the MAPK signaling pathway was significantly enriched by both the DEGs identified in H-P-G axis related tissues between NE and ED groups. Transcriptome studies in chicken (Zhu et al., 2021), duck (Bao et al., 2020), and goose (Hu et al., 2020) have also demonstrated the important role of this pathway in the control of reproductive activities. Furthermore, almost all DEGs (PCDH7, IGF2, FGF1, FGF16, FGF20, FGFR3, and MYC) enriched in this pathway were significantly up- or down-regulated in H-P-G axis related tissues between NE and ED. In recent years, some studies have found that the PCDH7 gene also plays an important role in regulating bone development. Study has found that PCDH7 deficient mice, due to reduced bone resorption and increased bone mass, ultimately lead to impaired formation of multinucleated osteoclasts, which revealed the important role of PCDH7 in maintaining bone homeostasis (Kim et al., 2020) . In addition, GWAS showed that mutations in PCDH7 were significantly correlated with foot bone mass and cannon bone length in cattle (An et al., 2020). It is worth noting that co-expression network analysis suggested the MAPK signaling pathway regulates the expression of PCDH7 through the FGF family and affects the development of external genitalia cartilage. Although these findings are promising, they are subject to certain limitations. In order to directly examine whether changes in the PCDH7 expression levels affect cartilage development, further functional validation experiments of PCDH7 need to be performed on male goose external genitalia base chondrocytes. Nevertheless, these findings provide valuable and novel insights into the potential mechanisms of controlling external genitalia cartilage development through changes in PCDH7 expression level mediated by MAPK signaling pathway.

Conclusions

In summary, our comprehensive study elucidates the complexity of ED in male geese, providing a multifaceted perspective that encompasses phenotypic and molecular analysis between NE and ED male geese. Our genomic analysis identified PCDH7 as a candidate gene be strongly associated with the external genitalia erection dysfunction in male geese. Further, combined with H-P-G axis transcriptome data, it was found that PCDH7 affect the development of external genitalia cartilage may be through MAPK signaling pathway. This study provides a detailed genetic regulatory network for the development of cartilage in the external genitalia of male geese, which can help improve the reproductive performance of male geese.

Availability of data and materials

The sequencing data generate in this study are available in the NCBI and GSA. The accession number of whole-genome resequencing data is PRJNA1043749. The accession number of transcriptome data is CRA031898 (hypothalamus, pituitary gland, testis, and external genitalia cartilage).

Additional file 1: Table S1. Partial SC × LD F2 resource population male goose whole genome resequencing data and depth.

Additional file 2: Table S2. The reads account and mapping rate of hypothalamus, pituitary gland, testis, and external genitalia cartilage between NE and ED.

Additional file 3: Table S3. Top 20 KEGG pathways enriched by the DEGs in hypothalamus, pituitary gland, testis, and external genitalia cartilage between NE and ED and related information.

Additional file 4: Table S4. The DEGs expression module analysis.

CRediT authorship contribution statement

Bincheng Tang: Writing – review & editing, Writing – original draft, Methodology, Data curation, Conceptualization. Shenqiang Hu: Methodology, Investigation, Formal analysis. Qingyuan Ouyang: Investigation, Formal analysis. Xin Zhang: Validation, Investigation. Jiwei Hu: Resources, Methodology. Liang Li: Visualization, Software. Jiwen Wang: Writing – review & editing, Supervision, Funding acquisition.

Disclosures

Dear editor, Please find enclosed the manuscript entitled “Multi-omics analyses provide new insight into the genetic mechanisms of the external genitalia erectile dysfunction in male geese” for consideration of publication in Poultry Science.

The manuscript contains original scientific research and has not been submitted/published earlier in any journal. The authors have no potential conflicts of interest that may bias the presentation and this manuscript is approved by all co-authors for publication.

Acknowledgments

This study was financially supported by the National Key R&D Program of China (2023YFD1300304), the Sichuan Science and Technology Program (2023NSFSC0227), the China Agricultural Research System (CARS-42-4), and the Key Technology Support Program of Sichuan Province (2021YFYZ0014), and the Program for Waterfowl Industry Technology System Innovation Team of Sichuan Province (SCCXTD-2024-25).

Footnotes

Supplementary material associated with this article can be found, in the online version, at doi:10.1016/j.psj.2026.107354.

Appendix. Supplementary materials

mmc1.xlsx (11.8KB, xlsx)
mmc2.xlsx (11.5KB, xlsx)
mmc3.xlsx (20.5KB, xlsx)
mmc4.xlsx (73.2KB, xlsx)

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Associated Data

This section collects any data citations, data availability statements, or supplementary materials included in this article.

Supplementary Materials

mmc1.xlsx (11.8KB, xlsx)
mmc2.xlsx (11.5KB, xlsx)
mmc3.xlsx (20.5KB, xlsx)
mmc4.xlsx (73.2KB, xlsx)

Data Availability Statement

The sequencing data generate in this study are available in the NCBI and GSA. The accession number of whole-genome resequencing data is PRJNA1043749. The accession number of transcriptome data is CRA031898 (hypothalamus, pituitary gland, testis, and external genitalia cartilage).

Additional file 1: Table S1. Partial SC × LD F2 resource population male goose whole genome resequencing data and depth.

Additional file 2: Table S2. The reads account and mapping rate of hypothalamus, pituitary gland, testis, and external genitalia cartilage between NE and ED.

Additional file 3: Table S3. Top 20 KEGG pathways enriched by the DEGs in hypothalamus, pituitary gland, testis, and external genitalia cartilage between NE and ED and related information.

Additional file 4: Table S4. The DEGs expression module analysis.

Articles from Poultry Science are provided here courtesy of Elsevier

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