Plant & Animal Genome VI Conference

W37

COMPARATIVE GENETIC MAPPING IN PINES

1. Institute of Forest Genetics, USDA Forest Service, Department of Environmental Horticulture, University of California, Davis, Davis, CA USA 95616
2. CSIRO Forestry and Forest Products, Queen Victoria Terrace, ACT2600 Australia

Genetic mapping and gene sequencing is underway in a number of species of pines and other conifers. Individual species maps are being used for mapping quantitative trait loci, disease resistance genes, and expressed genes of various types. As a result, the genetic map position of hundreds, and soon to be thousands, of genes will be known in pines. This information will be spread across many species though, and there is a need to integrate results into a synthesis for pines and perhaps all Pinaceae, as has been done for many of the major groups of crop plants. A first step toward this synthesis is to obtain an understanding of the extent of synteny in pines and Pinaceae. We recently initiated the comparative mapping of pine species using a common set of genetic markers to address this issue. Our goal is to construct and compare low density linkage maps of a number of pines in which mapping is in progress, including slash pine, maritime pine, Scots pine, Monterey pine, eastern white pine, and sugar pine. The core set of common genetic markers for these studies is a set of STS markers derived from mapped loblolly pine cDNA probes. In addition, we are using isozymes, and where feasible, RFLPs and SSRs. It is hoped that as a result of these efforts genomic researchers and tree breeders can use genetic map information from other species to make predictions about the location of genes in their species of interest.