CONIFER COMPARATIVE GENOMICS PROJECT

¹ Dept. of Environmental Horticulture, University of California, Davis CA 95616, USA

² Institute of Forest Genetics, USDA-Forest Service, Dept. of Environmental Horticulture, University of California, Davis CA 95616, USA

Comparative mapping has revealed the conservation of gene content and gene order over surprisingly long chromosomal tracts within 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. An international collaboration, called the Conifer Comparative Genomics Project, has been initiated to construct comparative maps for all important pine and conifer species. Loblolly pine, the most map-rich conifer with nearly 1000 genetic markers, serves as the reference to which other maps are compared. More than 100 orthologous expressed sequence tag polymorphism (ESTP) markers have been developed for use in comparative mapping and their utility in pines and other conifer species is under investigation. The ESTP markers are publicly available, as are DNA samples from two loblolly pine reference mapping populations.