Plant & Animal Genomes XVI Conference

January 12-16, 2008
Town & Country Convention Center
San Diego, CA

Integrated And Composite Genome Maps: The Bovine Example

Warren M. Snelling¹ , Readman Chiu² , Jacqueline E. Schein² , Matthew Hobbs³ , John C. McEwan⁴

¹  USDA, ARS, US Meat Animal Research Center. PO Box 166. Clay Center, NE 68933 USA

²  Genome Sciences Centre, British Columbia Cancer Agency, 570 W. 10th Avenue, Vancouver, BC V5Z4S6 Canada

³  CRC for Innovative Dairy Products, Reprogen, Faculty of Veterinary Science, University of Sydney, NSW 2006, Australia

⁴  AgResearch, Invermay Agricultural Research Centre, PB 50034, Mosgiel, New Zealand

Combinations of genome maps representing different types of information are needed to link economically important phenotypic variation with underlying genomic variation in farmed animals. For the cow, data from two linkage populations and three radiation hybrid (RH) panels were combined to construct a composite marker map, exploiting the complimentary resolution of linkage and RH data. Fingerprints of clones from three bacterial artificial chromosome (BAC) libraries were analyzed to build a BAC physical map. BAC clone end sequences enabled integration of the composite and BAC maps with draft bovine and human sequence assemblies. Locations of published quantitative trait loci (QTL) were projected according to flanking marker positions on the composite map. The QTL indicate regions associated with specific traits, annotated human sequence provides information about genes which may influence each trait, and the bovine sequence provides a reference to known SNP as well as for detecting additional polymorphisms underlying the QTL. The combined resources, available from www.bovinegenome.org, may facilitate development of genomic tools to accelerate genetic improvement of cattle. The strategies used for the bovine maps may be useful to other livestock and aquatic species.