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POULTRY GENOME NEWSLETTER-1999

ISSUE NO. 3, JULY, 1999

Plans are well underway for PAG-VIII. Some speakers and workshops remain to be confirmed, but a draft schedule can be viewed by clicking on the PAG-VIII title at the conference Web site, http://www.intl-pag.org/. As usual, NC-168 gets an early start on Saturday, January 8 with a 7-9 p.m. session, continuing on Sunday until about 6:00 p.m. Numerous other workshops will run concurrently on Sunday, with the PAG talks and workshops running from Monday through Wednesday, culminating with Wednesday night's banquet. Plant genomics and animal genomics sessions will run concurrently after an initial plenary talk to open the day on both Tuesday and Wednesday. For those interested in poultry diseases, PAG-VIII will be followed directly by the first Ag Microbial Genome meeting; see the same w! ! eb s ite as for PAG. Mary Delany is in process of organizing the NC-168/Poultry Workshop.

Deepest apologies to those who had troubles connecting to items on our Poultry Genome Homepage (http://poultry.mph.msu.edu) in late April or May. Hardware problems necessitated a switch to a new server and, during the changeover the old hard drive crashed and took several files with it. After a lengthy, but futile, period of trying to find back-up tapes for the right files, we finally decided just to re-do the whole site. The entry page now features an attractive Hoffman Grizzly rooster (picture courtesy of Tom Whiting at Whiting Farms, Colorado, feather supplier to fly tiers.). Side-bar links include:

As all its regular recipients know by now, the monthly poultry and mapping reference lists compiled and distributed by Lyman Crittenden are now being maintained at the Iowa State node for NRSP-8 Poultry Genome Mapping. The archive can be accessed at http://www.genome.iastate.edu/, followed by clicks on the chicken picture, then on "Database", and then "Crittenden Mapping Reference" or directly at http://www.genome.iastate.edu/db/map_ref/refsrch.html. You will also find the same links under "Databases" at our Web page: http://poultry.mph.msu.edu! ! . If you are not a subscriber and want to do so, send an email to poulst-request@db.genome.iastate.edu with the word subscribe in the subject box (and nothing in the text box). To unsubscribe, do the same with unsubscribe.

Martien Groenen has now completed the heroic task of joining the three major chicken linkage maps based on the Compton, East Lansing, and Wageningen populations into a single Consensus Map containing a total of 1814 markers on 51 linkage groups. It is becoming increasingly complex to meld the different population structures and marker types used, but Martien has developed an informative graphic presentation that updates our last Consensus Map (circa 1996). The new Consensus Map will be submitted for publication shortly and then it should be available at http://www.zod.wau.nl/vf/research/chicken/frame_chicken.html, the Groenen lab homepage, and we will also set up links to it from our own Web site.

As mentioned last issue, Jean-Marie Buerstedde has a web site dedicated to the chicken transformed B cell line, DT40, including access to the bursal B-cell ESTs that Jean-Marie has obtained. You can either search on-line or download the database to your own computer by ftp. The URL is http://genetics.hpi.uni-hamburg.de/estonline.html.

T TIME: Prefer T cell to B cell ESTs? Also noted last issue: check out Joan Burnside's U. of Delaware Chick EST Web Site at http://udgenome.ags.udel.edu/chickest/chick.htm. This site includes information on their activated chicken T cell EST database, search options for genes or sequences of interest, methods for using microarrays, and other interesting items.

As reported last issue, coordination funds have supported the construction of a chicken BAC library by Hong-bin Zhang of the Texas A&M BAC Center. This library used the UCD 001 Jungle Fowl line as its DNA source, one of the two lines used in the East Lansing reference map backcross. As of now, the library consists of about 30,000 clones with average insert size of about 150 kb (approximately 4X coverage). Inserts are into the BamHI site of the pBeloBAC11 vector. Twenty sets of robot-spotted filter sets have been obtained and will be available free while supplies last (email me at dodgson@msu.edu.) Alternatively, filter sets can be obtained directly from the Texas A&M BAC Center (http://hbz.tamu.edu) at the cost of preparing and sending them (about $400 per filter set with two spots of each clone per set). Once your clone of interest is identified by hybridization, individual clones can be obtained at cost from the BAC Center. If you'd like a complete replica of the library for pooling or other purposes, this can also be ordered from the BAC Center at a cost of about $4000 ($50 per 384 well plate, 80 plates in all) in the U.S. (about twice this outside the U.S.) Again, contact Dr. Zhang if interested: http://hbz.tamu.edu.

As noted previously, Martien Groenen's lab has also constructed a BAC library in collaboration with the Texas A&M BAC Center . This BAC library consists of nearly 50,000 clones with average inserts of about 130 kb (about 5X coverage) in the HindIII site of pECBAC1. (Different enzymes were used for clone inserts to enhance the likelihood that any given gene will be found in at least one of the two libraries.) See the Groenen homepage at http://www.zod.wau.nl/vf/research/chicken/frame_chicken.html. If you wish to screen this library, contact R. Crooijmans at richard.crooijmans@alg.vf.wau.nl.

Gene primers: Two sets of PCR primer pairs complementary to chicken genes are now available. In each case, a likely primer pair for PCR was derived using primer optimization software based on Genbank DNA sequence data. See the Tables entitled "Chicken Gene Primers #1 and #2" listed under "Resources" on our Web Page (http://poultry.mph.msu.edu) which provides the gene name and Genbank ID number for each primer pair, along with the predicted product size, if the primers are used in RT-PCR. None of these primers are fluorescently labeled. Due to the high cost of synthesis, we are not able to provide the whole kits of 200 or 100 primer pairs, respectively, on request. However, requests for primer pairs for one or several specific genes (up to 20 pairs at a time) will ! ! be filled as long as supplies last. Requests should be forwarded to J. Dodgson (dodgson@.msu.edu) or H. Cheng (hcheng@.msu.edu). (Thanks to Steve Suchyta for help in primer design).

From Jay Lush to Genomics: Visions for Animal Breeding and Genetics was held May 16-18 at Iowa State U. Papers and abstracts are available at http://agbio.cabweb.org/conference/index.htm. Among other items, these include entertaining viewpoints on the "marriage" of quantitative genetics and genomics by John Gibson and by Morris Soller and Ivica Medjugorac and excellent overviews of QTL-ology by Chris Haley and by Michel Georges and colleagues. For details, see Pig Genome Update #37 on the Angenmap web server at http://www.genome.iastate.edu/main2.html.

Poultry Science Association Annual Meeting, August 8-11, 1999, Springdale, Arkansas (hosted by the U. of Arkansas). Info at : http://www.psa.uiuc.edu/

Transgenic Animal Research Conference, August 14-19, 1999, Granlibakken Conference Center, Tahoe City, CA. Sponsored by the U.C. Davis Biotechnology Program. Contact info.: mmmcgloughlin@ucdavis.edu

50th Annual Meeting of the European Association for Animal Production, August 22-26, 1999, Zurich, Switzerland. Contact: http://eaap-1999-zurich.ethz.ch .

Candidate Genes for Animal Health (sponsored by the Research Institute for the Biology of Farm Animals), August 25-27, 1999, Rostock, Germany. Contact: http://www.fbn-dummerstorf.de/fb3/Symp99.htm

The Microarray Meeting, Sept. 22-25, 1999, Scottsdale, Arizona. Hosted by Nature Genetics. See http://genetics.nature.com or http://www.bioedge.net/microarray.html

Poultry Genetics Symposium sponsored by AVIAGEN, European Poultry Breeders' Roundtable, and Working Group 3 of WPSA, October 6-8, 1999, Mariensee, Germany. Contact: Prof. Rudolf Preisinger, Lohmann Tierzucht GmbH, P.O. Box 460, D-27454 Cuxhaven, Germany; Phone: 0049 4721 505126; Fax: 0049 4721 38852; preisinger@ltz.de

Functional Genomics, Oct. 18-19, 1999, and Applications of Genomics to Animal Models for Pharmaceutical Studies: Mice and Rats, Oct. 20, 1999, Boston, MA. Contact Cambridge Healthtech Institute, http://www.healthtech.com or email chi@healthtech.com .

Physiological Genomics and Rat Models, Dec. 9-12, 1999, Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory, N.Y. Contact info: http://www.cshl.org/meetings

Plant and Animal Genome VIII, joint with NC-168 and NAGRP annual meetings, Jan. 8-13, 2000, Town & Country Convention Center, San Diego, CA. More information on page 1 of newsletter and/or see http://www.intl-pag.org. Followed immediately by Ag Microbial Genome I, Jan. 13-14, same location. See http://www.ag-microbial.org/agm

International Society of Animal Genetics (ISAG 2000), Hyatt Regency Hotel, Minneapolis, MN, July 22-26, 2000. See http://www.cvm.umn.edu/research/isag2000/home.htm

Poultry Science Association Annual Meeting, August 18-20, 2000, Montreal, Quebec. Info at : http://www.psa.uiuc.edu

XXI World Poultry Congress, August 20-25, 2000, Montreal Convention Centre, Montreal, Quebec. (Held in conjunction with the PSA meeting, see above, and the 6th International Marek's Disease Symposium. See http://www.wpc2000.org or email: info@eventsintl.com .

email: dodgson@.msu.edu

email: hcheng@msu.edu