STEPPING OUT FROM ARABIDOPSIS -- TOWARD ANALYSIS OF GENOMIC DIVERSITY IN THE BRASSICACEAE USING GENETICALLY-ANCHORED PHYSICAL MAPS

¹ Plant Genome Mapping Laboratory, University of Georgia, Athens GA

² University of California, Davis CA

³ University of Wisconsin, Madison WI

⁴ Hawaiian Agricultural Research Center, Aiea HI

Its considerable morphological and functional diversity, together with the finished sequence of one taxon (Arabidopsis thaliana), makes the Brassicaceae in general, and B. oleracea in particular, an attractive system for comparative genomic biology. To empower such studies, we are using a high-throughput approach to anchor genetically-mapped probes and Arabidopsis-derived sequences to four B. oleracea BAC libraries. Genetic maps from several labs are being aligned by anchoring sequence-tagged sites to the BACs, and also identifying the best-matching site in the Arabidopsis sequence. Overgo probes from Arabidopsis-derived sequences are being selected preferentially for conservation with DNA sequences from other taxa to increase their value in diverse Brassicaceae – their application to a Carica papaya BAC library provides an initial empirical test of their utility.