Plant & Animal Genome IX Conference

Workshop: Cattle/Sheep
W17_02.html

A 3800 GENE MICROARRAY FOR CATTLE FUNCTIONAL GENOMICS

¹ The W.M. Keck Center for Comparative and Functional Genomics, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, Urbana, IL, 61801

² Department of Animal Sciences, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, Urbana, IL, 61801

Microarray technology is revolutionizing biology by permitting the simultaneous analysis of transcript levels of thousands of genes in different physiological states of an organism, tissue or cell. This technology is presently being integrated into the cattle genomics program at the University of Illinois. Preliminary studies using a 768 gene microarray compared gene expression in fetal and adult cattle spleen tissue samples. Results revealed developmental changes in gene expression related to the ontogeny of immune function. The resources for cattle functional genomics have now been expanded by the creation of a 3,800 gene microarray. The additional sequences for the array were selected from a set of non-redundant clones derived from normalized and subtracted placenta and spleen cDNA libraries. The inclusion of many novel genes on the expanded array specific to these tissues will aid in the recognition of their function and role in developmental and immune processes. Sequencing of 7247 additional placenta ESTs has been completed (see Lewin et al., this meeting) and will be used to approximately double the number of transcripts represented on the arrays. Experiments aimed at improving the quality of microarray data and validation of results are presently underway.