BAC-BASED PHYSICAL MAPPING AS A TOOL FOR ADVANCING UNDERSTANDING OF ORGANIZATION AND EVOLUTION OF THE COTTON GENOME.

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¹Applied Genetic Technology Center, University of Georgia, Athens, GA 30602
²Maharashtra Hybrid Seed Co. Ltd, Jalna, India
³Dept Soil and Crop Science, Texas A&M University, College Station, TX 77843

As part of a long-term program to understand the organization and evolution of the cotton genome, we describe the development of bacterial artificial chromosome (BAC) libraries for cotton, and their use in studying unique features of polyploid genome organization and evolution. The polyploid nature of the cotton genome creates both technical challenges, and learning opportunities, that are not available in taxa with simpler genomes. By anchoring the BACs to a fine-scale genetic map, and also to numerous families of dispersed repetitive DNA elements, we expect to learn more about the co-evolution of divergent genomes that are brought into a common nucleus by polyploid formation. This will also create a set of tools and information of utility for a wide range of goals in plant biology and crop improvement. Together with a previously-described BAC library, these tools provide the means to isolate genomic DNA containing a host of agriculturally-important genes and QTLs that have been mapped in cotton over the past decade.