Abstract:To obtain understanding of its fattening mechanism, mRNA differential display reverse transcription PCR (DDRT-PCR) was applied to study the differences of gene expression in French Landes grey goose in conditions of overfeeding and normal feeding. One gene was found to be significantly up-regulated in fatty liver(P < 0.01), which had a cds length of 1 248 bp (GenBank accession No.EF541127) and showed 94% identity to chicken transforming growth factor beta 2 (TGFB2). The sequence analysis revealed that its 1 239 bp-in-length open reading frame (ORF) encoded a 412-amino-acid protein containing two putative conserved domains of TGFb-propeptide and TGF-beta, and had high homology with its homologues. The function of this protein had been briefly reviewed based on published information. The tissue expression analysis indicated that goose TGFB2 mRNA was expressed higher in liver, muscular stomach, spleen and ovary than that in other tested tissues. The present results suggested that overfeeding could increase the mRNA expression level of goose TGFB2.