PAMG-XI will again be at the Town & Country Convention Center in San Diego, CA, from Sat., Jan. 11 through Wed., Jan. 15, 2003. The Poultry Workshop/NC-168 meeting will begin on the afternoon of Saturday, Jan. 11. Although the abstract deadline of Oct. 4 has passed, you may still be able to get a late one accepted. Advance registration (at lower price) must be submitted by November 1! See www.intl-pag.org/ to view the program, register or submit abstracts on-line. As usual, some support will be available from the Coordinators for NRSP-8 member and student participation, including the Neal Jorgensen Travel Award for Poultry. If interested, please email dodgson@msu.edu as soon as possible.

The 2003 USDA-CSREES NRI grant program RFA has been posted at www.reeusda.gov/nri/programs/programs.htm. IMPORTANT NOTE: Deadline dates for the Animal Genome and Genetic Mechanisms (43.0) and the associated Animal Genome: Basic Reagents and Tools (43.1) programs have been moved forward to January 15, 2003 this year! (For FY 2004, these deadline dates will move even earlier, to Dec. 1, 2003.) Peter Brayton of NRI has alerted us that Bioinformatics applications may be submitted to both the Reagents and Tools program just mentioned and to program 44.0, Animal Health & Well-Being, deadline date, December 1, 2002.

As mentioned in our last issue, the proposal to close the East Lansing USDA-ARS Avian Disease and Oncology Lab (ADOL) this year failed in Congress. In order to resolve this issue in a more permanent manner and provide needed stability to ADOL, Janet Fulton of Hy-Line International has written USDA Secretary Ann Veneman requesting an ADOL stakeholder's meeting be held before the end of November. Janet assembled a very long and impressive list of co-signers. Contact her at jfulton@hyline.com if you want more info.

As reported last issue, NHGRI (at NIH) rated the chicken genome as a "high priority" for full genome sequencing, along with those of the chimpanzee, honeybee, sea urchin, T. thermophila, and several fungi. (See www.genome.gov/page.cfm?pageID=10002154.) Recently, the cattle and dog genomes have also been moved to "high priority". This doesn't necessarily mean that sequencing on these genomes will begin soon. The Washington U. Genome Center has recently been granted permission to begin work on the chicken genome sequence (along with the chimp). Joseph Jen, USDA Undersecretary for Research, Education and Economics, serves as coordinator of the Domestic Animal Genome Interagency Work Group. That Group will hold a stakeholders' meeting on Friday, Oct. 11, in Washington. Hans Cheng, Calvin Keeler (U. Del.), John McPherson (Wash. U.) and Bob Waterston (Wash. U.) will attend on behalf of the chicken genome.

NC-168: The renewal proposal for NC-168 must be submitted this month. Abel Ponce de Leon heads the writing of Objective 1, Jim Petitte the writing of Objective 2 and Ron Okimoto leads Objective 3. Marlene Emara and Chris Ashwell agreed to lead writing of the Introduction. If you haven't been contacted by Marlene and are interested in participating, please email her asap at emara@udel.edu!

NRSP-8: The renewal proposal for NRSP-8 must also go in this month. Cathy Ernst coordinates the overall writing team. Cathy has assembled a first draft that's now under review. You can access the draft at http://www.lgu.umd.edu/. To do so, you must login as a guest, then select "Search by Project No. or Title", and enter nrsp_temp022 as the project number to see the draft document. Send any comments to Cathy at ernstc@msu.edu.

Paul Neiman (Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center, FHCRC), Joan Burnside and Dave Burt (Roslin Institute) are making continued progress towards a chicken cDNA array spotted on glass slides. Joan is assembling (in silico) a set of non-redundant chicken expressed sequence tag (EST) sequences that do not overlap the existing set of 4000 ESTs from the DT40 cell line that Paul has already developed. Once this is complete, Dave Burt will replate the selected clones from the ESTs generated by the European Union consortium (especially, U. of Manchester Inst. of Science and Technology, U. of Nottingham, U. of Dundee, and the Roslin Institute) in collaboration with Incyte Genomics (www.chick.umist.ac.uk) and send them to Paul. The FHCRC genomics facility will be in charge of PCR amplifying the inserts and spotting slides with the total 14,000 clone set. Stay tuned for further details on cost and distribution. Additional indications of interest can be emailed to Paul Neiman (pneiman@fred.fhcrc.org).

Congratulations go to Dr. Richard Frahm, USDA-CSREES Director of the National Animal Genome Research Program, who has announced his intention to retire as of the end of 2002. Dick has supplied leadership to our Program for ten years now (It can't be that long, can it?), and he'll be greatly missed. Happily, we've persuaded him to attend one more PAMG meeting this January in San Diego, so most of us will get a chance to thank him in person.

Congratulations also (along with the requisite commiseration) to Nat Bumstead, recently named Head of Molecular Biology for the BBSRC Institute for Animal Health. Nat will continue his very successful research program, while carving out time for new administrative duties. Good luck, and best wishes, Nat! (Maybe you can get Dick Frahm to send you all the suits and ties he will no longer need.)

Plant, Animal and Microbial Genome XI, joint with NC-168 and NAGRP annual meetings, Jan. 11-15, 2003, Town & Country Convention Center, San Diego, CA. See www.intl-pag.org/.

Advances in Genome Biology & Technology (joint with Automation in Mapping and DNA Sequencing), February 5-8, 2003, Marco Island, Florida. See www.agbt.org.

International Symposium on Animal Functional Genomics, May 9-11, 2003, Kellogg Center, Michigan State University, East Lansing, MI. Email rosag@msu.edu for more info.

Poultry Science Association Annual Meeting, July 6-10, 2003, Madison, Wisconsin. See www.poultryscience.org for information.

Microsatellite primer kits: Information on chicken microsatellite primer pairs can be found at http://poultry.mph.msu.edu/resources/microkits.htm. A version of a framework primer kit (with 147 well-spaced microsatellite marker primer pairs) called the "Comprehensive Mapping Kit #7" is available (thanks in part to a generous donation from Hy-Line International). Due to our limited budget (and the cost of the Marshfield microsatellite patent), we now can supply only our Population Tester Kit (9 highly polymorphic microsatellite markers for strain identification, gene flow studies or testing in other birds [not usually recommended]) or the new Comprehensive Mapping Kit #7. If interested, contact: (dodgson@.msu.edu) or (hcheng@.msu.edu), describing your desired use of primers.

NEW TURKEY GENOME HOMEPAGE: Kent Reed at the U. of Minnesota has placed his U of M Turkey Microsatellite Database and the cDNA/RFLP turkey linkage map developed by U. of Minn in collaboration with Dave Harry and Nicholas Turkey Breeding Farms on his website at www.tc.umn.edu/~reedx054/Turkeygenome.htm. Those interested in turkey genetics should definitely check this out. Thanks to Kent for sending this information.

Alain Vignal sends word that the INRA Chicken Radiation Hybrid Panel for RH mapping the chicken genome is now available. The Chick RH6 panel was made by Mireille Morisson, Alain, and their colleagues (see Genet. Sel. Evol. 34:521-533, 2002). Initial tests on chromosome 7 have verified that the panel works well, and the INRA team is beginning to generate a framework RH map for chicken. RH maps have played a key role in integrating genetic linkage maps with physical (i.e., BAC contig) maps and sequences in mammals, but generation of adequate avian panels has been a challenge, until now. The INRA panel is composed of 90 hybrids, distributed in a microtiter plate (5 micrograms of DNA each) with appropriate controls. For those planning to map 20 or more markers, a microplate can be shipped to you. For fewer markers, it may be possible to send primers to INRA, so that they can add them to their pipeline. INRA will coordinate data analysis for all markers. Contact Mireille Morisson (mmorisso@toulouse.inra.fr) or Alain Vignal (vignal@toulouse.inra.fr) if interested.

The chicken BAC library constructed at Texas A&M by Hongbin Zhang and colleagues, using (a female of) the UCD001 Jungle Fowl line as its DNA source, consists of over 115,000 BACs (~39,400 each in three sublibraries with BamHI, EcoRI and HindIII partial digest inserts). Filter sets with 36,864 BACs from each of the three sub-libraries are available, email dodgson@msu.edu. A requirement for receiving a free filter set is that the user agree to provide the name of the probe used and clone locations at a later date, so all users can benefit from coordination resources (see below). Alternatively, filter sets can be obtained directly from GENEfinder Genomic Resources (http://hbz.tamu.edu) at the cost of preparing them. In either case, once your clone of interest is identified, individual clones can be obtained for a fee from GENEfinder. Contact Felipe Santos at contact@bac-center.tamu.edu to purchase BACs.

Through efforts in my lab and those of others who've received filter sets, one or more BAC clones (BamHI or EcoRI, so far) corresponding to nearly 400 different genes and markers (mostly from the chicken linkage map) have been identified. This information will eventually be posted on our website (http://poultry.mph.msu.edu), but I'm happy to email the database (Excel™ file) right away to anyone who requests it (email dodgson@msu.edu). We're (Michael Romanov and Jennifer Price) working to expand this list of assignments as fast as possible. If you have a gene/marker you wish to add to our pipeline, please email me asap.

As reported last issue, Pieter de Jong (Children's Hospital of Oakland Research Institute) has completed a new chicken BAC library with ~195 kb inserts (CHORI-261), using the same UCD001 source DNA as described above. CHORI-261 has ~73,700 BACs for ~12x haploid genome coverage. Pieter has also generating a turkey BAC library (CHORI-260) using DNA from an inbred Nicholas Turkey Breeding Farms bird. If interested in either library and/or filter arrays, see www.chori.org/bacpac/ and access the "Detailed List of Libraries" and/or "Screening Resources". Coordination funds have been used to purchase a limited number of CHORI-261 chicken BAC filter arrays and a set can be provided on request while supplies last (see contact info and requirements in first paragraph). At the moment, we have no contig information (or other info) for CHORI-261 BACs, but Wash. U. is fingerprinting this library, as well, so we should have this in the not too distant future. When time and resources permit, we'll extend our genetic marker-BAC alignment studies to this library, as well.

The chicken BAC contig map web interface developed by Zhang and his group at Texas A&M is on-line. Fingerprint data from over 60,000 BACS (20,000+ from each of the three sublibraries) are included in the database. The web site can be found at http://hbz.tamu.edu - click on Physical Mapping - then on Chicken Map (on the left) - scroll down to "Chicken Clone -> FPC Hitting Tool" and click. Enter the ID number of any BAC and search for overlapping BACs, based on the fingerprint data. John McPherson of the Washington U. Human Genome Center reports that he's finished fingerprinting the complete UCD001 Texas A&M BAC library in preparation for chicken genome sequencing. The CHORI-261 library hasn't yet been fingerprinted but soon will be. Availability of the Wash. U. chicken BAC contigs will be announced in a future newsletter.

For those wishing to use PCR rather than filter hybridization to screen for your gene(s) of interest, Research Genetics has prepared PCR-ready, superplate, column, and row DNA pools of 30,000 BamHI BACs (the same collection offered on our first BAC filter sets). Thus, this portion of the BAC library can be screened by a 3-dimensional strategy that requires 240 PCR reactions. Unfortunately, Research Genetics defaulted on our plans to make panels of these pools available for purchase directly from them. Thus, we will supply limited numbers of screening arrays of aliquots of these pools on request to NRSP-8 member scientists. Alternatively, we hope to set up routine screening of the pools here at ADOL, and it may be possible to include your gene/probe of interest if you send us your PCR primers. If interested, please contact Hans Cheng (hcheng@.msu.edu). A more detailed description of the pools is on our website at (http://poultry.mph.msu.edu/resources/resources.htm).

Martien Groenen and Richard Crooijmans have also constructed a BAC library in collaboration with Texas A&M (Crooijmans et al., Mammalian Genome 11: 360-363, 2000). For more information, see www.zod.wau.nl/vf. If you wish to purchase or use the Groenen-Crooijmans library, either contact www.zod.wau.nl/abg/hs/research/molecular/intro.html, the UK Human Genome Mapping Project Resource Center at http://www.hgmp.mrc.ac.uk, who sell filter sets of this library, or GENEfinder Genomic Resources (http://hbz.tamu.edu).

We're happy to include items of general interest to the poultry genetics community in the Poultry Genome Newsletter. Please email your contributions to us by September 15 for the next issue.

email: dodgson@msu.edu

email: hcheng@msu.edu