Understanding the temporal development of conscious pain sensation in chick foetuses

• Applicants: Professor Dr. Ruijin Huang; Dr. Inga Tiemann
• Subject Area: Developmental Neurobiology
• Term: since 2023
• Project identifier: Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 531819247

From 2022, the killing of day-old male chicks will be banned in Germany, although in-ovo sex determination and killing will be permitted in the entire brooding period. From 2024, however, the killing of foetuses will only be allowed up to the 6th day of incubation. Given the ethical implications of this prospective legislation, it is important to understand up to which day of incubation pain sensation will not be triggered. However, there are no reliable experimental findings that shed light on when chick foetuses acquire the ability to feel pain. In order to fill in this research gap, in this project, we will record cerebral electroencephalography patterns in chicken foetuses in response to thermal and mechanical nociceptive stimuli delivered at various time points during incubation. To corroborate these findings, we will also follow the functional development of the nociceptive afferent and efferent tracts by using GFP electroporation along the development time course. Furthermore, the transcriptomic response in the cerebrum after noxious stimulation will be assessed through mRNA sequencing. These morphological, physiological and genetic data would shed light on which incubation day chick foetuses start to consciously feel pain and would help solve the ethical dilemma of the incubation period within which it would be appropriate to kill male chicken foetuses.

• DFG Programme: Research Grants
• Co-Investigators: Privatdozent Dr.-Ing. Jörg Meister; Professor Dr. Marco Weiergräber