**POULTRY GENOME NEWSLETTER** Issue No. 3, July, 1998
PLANT AND ANIMAL GENOME VII (PAG-VII) and NAGRP/NC-168:
PAG-VI and the companion NAGRP and NC-168 meetings were again a great success this past January. Total attendance at PAG-VI was over 1,100 with over 600 scientific abstracts. Next year NC-168 will again meet jointly with PAG-VII in San Diego. NC-168 will meet Saturday, January 16 (starting in the evening) and January 17 and PAG-VII will go from January 17 to 21. The pre-registration deadline for PAG-VII will be Nov. 13, 1998 and the abstract deadline (on-line submission) will be October 16. Abstracts can be submitted as of Sept. 1. All the relevant information and abstracts from past meetings can be found at the new PAG Website: http://www.intl-pag.org
MORE MEETING NEWS:
ISAG & POULTRY GENOME MAPPING WORKSHOP
The next meeting of the International Society for Animal Genetics will be held in Auckland, New Zealand on August 9-14, 1998. ISAG will include the Poultry Genome Mapping Workshop, being coordinated by Martien Groenen and Hans Cheng. The tentative workshop program with topic sub-coordinators is given below:
1. Integration of linkage maps and overview of all linkage data
(Martien Groenen / Hans Cheng))
2. Physical mapping data (Abel Ponce de Leon / Alan Vignal)
-Standard Karyotype
-alignment with linkage maps
-set of probes for the identification of micro chromosomes
-nomenclature for micro chromosomes
3. Comparative map (Dave Burt)
4. Resources in genome mapping (to be determined)
-available genomic libraries (which, where, how etc)
-cDNA libraries
-databases
5. QTL data and mapping of genes for monogenic traits
For this session a selection will be made of presentations based on the abstracts for the meeting. Therefore, this will be the only theme with several presentations.
WASHINGTON UPDATE
AGRICULTURAL GENOME INITIATIVE and RESEARCH FUNDING
A meeting was held to discuss the USDA's Agricultural Genome Initiative (formerly called the Food Genome Initiative) on April 15 in Washington, with a follow-up meeting of plant, animal and microbial genome representatives on May 26. Colin Scanes testified on behalf of animal genome researchers at the first meeting, and several other of our colleagues also participated. The follow-up meeting was hosted by Dr. Eileen Kennedy, Deputy Under Secretary for Research, Education and Economics, Dr. Sally Rockey, Deputy Administrator for Contract and Grant Administration at CSREES, and Dr. Michael Roberts, the new Chief Scientist for the NRI grants program (see below). The Initiative proposes a multi-faceted program targeting food-related plant, animal and microbial genome research and applications that would ramp up to a total of $100 million per year in spending by USDA. Areas of emphasis include bioinformatics, functional genomics, physical maps, QTLs and EST generation. At the second meeting, much of the discussion was on the effort to obtain a one time only allocation of $600 million over five years for agricultural research (including the Genome Initiative and Food Safety Initiative). This Program was authorized for funding by Congress and was well on track as late as June 10. However, this program and some other agricultural research support were then deleted, apparently in one of the appropriations committees or subcommittees in Congress. Dr. Roberts still held out some hope for restoring the funding as of last week, but at this point, neither recurring nor one time only dollars are in hand for the USDA Genome Initiative. On the positive side, the fact that the USDA is taking increasing interest in genomics and now has specific authorization language to support such research in the Farm Bill puts animal geneticists "at the table" in future discussions of USDA research spending priorities.
As many of you know, funding for agricultural research, especially by competitive programs, has never had the same popularity in Congress, as have the National Science Foundation (NSF) and National Institutes of Health. For example, the NRI Competitive Grant Program has been "authorized" for $500 million for nearly a decade; however, each year it is lucky to maintain its approximate $100 million budget without even inflationary increases. Dr. Roberts reports that next year's NRI budget will again be flat, and even this is seen as something of a moral victory. As many of you also know, last year Congress passed (and funded) a Plant Genome Initiative, putting the extra funding into the NSF budget. NSF received 67 proposals requesting these funds and expects to award the full $40 million by the end of this September.
Over the last couple of months I've had several occasions to speak with and provide input to Mike Roberts, and I think he will be another valuable proponent of animal genome research in Washington in addition to Dick Frahm. Mike is the first animal biologist to be Chief Scientist and continues to run a very productive research program in animal reproductive biology at the U. of Missouri. Dr. Roberts recently solicited comments and then wrote a persuasive argument in favor of animal genome research to send to Dr. Clifford Gabriel of the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy. Obviously, we need all the help we can get.
Speaking of the NRI, the Animal Genetic Mechanisms and Gene Mapping Panel meeting concluded last week. The panel received 64 research proposals and 2 conference proposals (I had hoped for more.) Due to the budget limitations described above, this Program had slightly over $2.5 million to distribute and was able to fund 15 research proposals (slightly over 20%) and both conferences, only after heartlessly cutting their budgets. As Mike Roberts suggested, at least 30-40% of our proposals were more than worthy of funding, and those that did get funded could easily have justified at least twice the funds that we were able to provide. This is exactly the sort of thing we could do if NRI were funded at its authorized level of $500 million, a level recommended by the National Academy of Sciences in its study of the NRI nearly 10 years ago.
TURKEY SEQUENCE INFORMATION!!: THANKS ED!
Ed Smith of Tuskegee U. sends word of their ftp site from which daily deposits of turkey microsatellite sequences (with repeat length greater than 10) can be accessed: 192.203.127.248. Log in as anonymous, with your email as password. You can also read more on the Tuskegee Turkey Genome Project at http://agriculture.tusk.edu/caens/genome/genome.html.
MICROSATELLITE PRIMER KITS AND OTHER RESOURCES
As reported previously, we have restocked our supply of microsatellite kits #1 to #3, due to the unprecedented demand. In addition, we've generated Kit #4, which contains an additional 56 microsatellite primer pairs, bringing our total collection to 575 pairs. All are fluorescently labeled for potential use on automated sequencers. Information on all Kits is posted under "Microsatellite Marker Information and Available Primer Kits" in the "Maps and Tables" section of our Homepage (http://poultry.mph.msu.edu). Email me (22314jbd@msu.edu) or Hans Cheng (hcheng@msu.edu) if you are interested. We have also recently made arrangements with the Texas A&M BAC Center to construct a second chicken BAC library that should be available later this year. This second BAC library will use the UCD 001 Jungle Fowl line as DNA source, the same line used in the East Lansing reference map. Martien Groenen has also constructed a BAC library in collaboration with the Texas A&M Center. For more info on this library, see the Groenen homepage at http://www.zod.wau.nl/vf/chickensite/chicken.html. Further primer sets of interest are presently being designed and should be available by this October.
DICK WITTER OF ADOL ELECTED TO NATIONAL ACADEMY!
Congratulations to Richard Witter, long time Director of the USDA-ARS Avian Disease and Oncology Laboratory (ADOL), on his recent election to the National Academy of Sciences. As most of you know, Dick's major scientific contributions have been in the development of vaccines against Marek's Disease Virus (MDV) and a wealth of studies on the pathology and prevention of MDV. This is certainly a rare honor, especially for an animal scientist, and it is worthy recognition of Dick's seminal research contributions and of all the excellent research performed at ADOL over many years.
IN THE NEWS
Some of you may have seen "A genetic game of chicken" in the Science and Technology section of THE ECONOMIST, May 2nd issue. This article describes China's chicken genome project, being led by Drs. Daniel Chan and Fred Leung of Hong Kong University. According to the article, the focus of the research is characterization of the wide diversity of chicken breeds in China and mapping of QTL related to poultry meat quality and flavor.
PUT YOUR ITEM OF INTEREST HERE
We are always happy to include items of general interest to the poultry genetics community in the Poultry Genome Newsletter. Please email your contributions to us at the addresses below. Please send any items by September 15, 1998 to be sure it gets into the next issue.
Upcoming meetings of interest:
International Symposium on Food-Bourne Salmonella in Poultry, Baltimore, MD, July 25-26, 1998. Info: American Association of Avian Pathologists, 382 West Street Road, KennettSquare, PA 19348-1692, Fax: 610-444-5387, email: aaap@vet.upenn.edu.
Poultry Science Association, Penn State University, August 3-7, 1998; contact: Poultry Science Association, 1111 North Dunlap Avenue, Savoy, IL 61874 or http://gallus.tamu.edu/psa/psa.html/
International Society for Animal Genetics, Auckland, New Zealand, August 9-14, 1998. Conference info: Ian Anderson, 64-6-356-9099 x7261, Fax: 64-6-350-5621, ebtu@manawatu.gen.nz; Program inquiries: Tom Broad, 64-3-489-3809, Fax: 64-3-489-9308, broad@agresearch.cri.nz; or http://biochem.otago.ac.nz:800/panzora/isag/isag3.html
Fourth Global Conference on Conservation of Domestic Animal Genetic Resources, Birendra International Convention Centre, Baneswar, Kathmandu, Nepal, August 17-21, 1998. Info: RBI NEPAL '98 Kathmandu Conference Secretariat, c/o Dr. Nanda Prasad Shrestha, Nepal Agricultural Research Council, P.O. Box 1950, Kathmandu, Nepal, phone: 977-1-523160, Fax: 977-1-521197, email: biodiversity@narcanbd.wlink.comp.np.
Plant and Animal Genome VII; San Diego, CA, January 17-21, 1999; associated with National Animal Genome Research Program meeting and NC-168 Regional Research meeting. Abstract deadline, Oct. 16; registration deadline, Nov. 13. Information is now available at http://www.intl-pag.org.
ISAG 2000, Hyatt Regency Hotel, Minneapolis, MN, July 23-26, 2000. More info to come.
PLEASE NOTE: CHANGE OF EMAIL ADDRESS
Some of you may be using or have in your "Nicknames" files my old email address (22314jbd@msu.edu). Unfortunately, the server supporting this site is dying. Please change to my other email address: dodgson@pilot.msu.edu.
Addresses:
Jerry Dodgson, Poultry Coordinator; email: dodgson@pilot.msu.edu
Dept. of Microbiology, Giltner Hall
Michigan State University
East Lansing, MI 48824
Hans Cheng, Co-Coord.; email: hcheng@pilot.msu.edu
ADOL, USDA-ARS
3606 E. Mt. Hope Ave.
East Lansing, MI 48823
Lyman Crittenden, Coordinator Emeritus.; email: crittend@itis.com
8550 Highway 19
Cross Plains, WI 53528-9300
Supported by Regional Research Funds, Hatch Act, to the
National Research Service Program: NRSP-8.
National Animal Genome Research Program, Richard Frahm, Director, CSREES