Plant & Animal Genomes XVII Conference

January 10-14, 2009
Town & Country Convention Center
San Diego, CA

The River Buffalo Genome Mapping Initiative: An International Effort To Construct A First Generation Whole Genome Radiation Hybrid Map For The River Buffalo.

M. Elisabete J. Amaral^1,11 , Jason R, Grant² , Paul Stothard² , Penny K. Riggs³ , Guohui Lin⁴ , Tom Goldammer⁵ , Satish Kumar⁶ , Paola Mariani⁷ , Alexandre R. Caetano⁸ , Humberto Tonhati⁹ , Madhu S. Tantia¹⁰ , Stephen Moore² , James E. Womack¹¹

¹  Department of Biologia, UNESP – São Paulo State University, IBILCE, São Jose Rio Preto, SP, Brazil

²  Department of Agricultural, Food and Nutritional Science, University of Alberta, Edmonton, AB, Canada

³  Department of Animal Science, Texas A&M University, College Station, TX, USA

⁴  Departament of Computing Science, University of Alberta, Edmonton, AB, Canada

⁵  Forschungsbereich Molekularbiologie, Forschungsinstitut für die Biologie landwirtschaftlicher Nutztiere (FBN), Dummerstorf, Germany

⁶  Centre for Cellular and Molecular Biology, Hyderabad, India

⁷  Parco Tecnologico Padano, Via Einstein, Polo Universitario, Lodi, Italy

⁸  Embrapa Recursos Geneticos e Biotecnologia, Parque Estacao Biologica, Brasilia, DF, Brazil

⁹  Department of Animal Sciences, UNESP – São Paulo State University, FCAV, Jaboticabal, SP, Brazil

¹⁰  National Bureau of Animal Genetic Resources, Karnal, India

¹¹  Department of Veterinary Pathobiology, Texas A&M University, College Station, TX, USA

The extensive use of buffalo in agriculture worldwide, and especially in developing countries, begs for genetic resources to evaluate and improve traits important to local and regional economies. Until recently very few resources exist to study genomics of buffalo. Although efforts have been made to assign markers to specific buffalo chromosomes, using mainly fluorescence in situ hybridization techniques (FISH), much remains to be done in order to generate high resolution maps of the buffalo genome. Taking advantage of the extensive resources and tools now available as a result of the bovine genome sequencing project, and given the close evolutionary relationship between cattle and river buffalo, we initiate an international effort to construct a first generation whole genome radiation hybrid map for the river buffalo. The recently constructed whole-genome radiation hybrid panel (BBURH5000) was used to generate RH maps using 3093 cattle-derived markers (SNPs, coding genes, ESTs, and microsatellites). From the total number of markers, 2621 were distributed into 43 linkage groups (LOD ≥ 8), covering all autosomes (24) and the X chromosome. The RH maps were aligned to the current bovine genome sequence assembly (Btau_4.0) indicating regions of possible rearrangements between the chromosomes of both species. Considering that genetic maps are absent for river buffalo, this first-generation whole genome RH map provides a resource for positional candidate cloning of genes associated with complex traits and also for large-scale physical mapping of the river buffalo genome.