COMPARATIVE MAPPING IN LOBLOLLY AND SLASH PINES

¹ Institute of Forest Genetics, USDA Forest Service, Department of Environmental Horticulture, University of California, Davis, Davis, CA 95616 USA

² Forest Science Department, Texas A&M University, College Station, TX 77843 USA

Comparative mapping has revealed the conservation of gene content and gene order over surprisingly long chromosomal tracts in several animal and angiosperm plant groups. We are investigating syntenic relationships in the genus Pinus to evaluate whether the more than 100 species can be viewed as a single genetic system, thereby allowing the transfer of genetic information between species. Loblolly pine, the most `map-rich' conifer with nearly 600 genetic markers, serves as the reference to which other maps are compared. A set of loblolly pine markers that are likely to detect orthologous loci in other species is being derived and is publicly available on the Dendrome server. Currently, this includes numerous RFLPs and more than 50 ESTs distributed across most of the genetic map. Results of our first experiment, comparative mapping of loblolly pine and slash pine, both of the subsection Australes, will be presented.