POULTRY GENOME NEWSLETTER 2000,

ISSUE NO. 4, OCTOBER 2000

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Abstracts for PAG-IX are due by October 13!! These should be submitted electronically at www.intl-pag.org/pag/abstracts.html. Registration can also be done online or by Fax; see www.intl-pag.org/pag/registration.html. Registration for non-profit participants is $400 by Nov. 3; $500 after Nov. 3 ($200 for students). PAG-IX will be at the Town & Country Convention Center in San Diego, CA (www.towncountry.com) on Jan. 14-17, 2001, with the Poultry Workshop/NC-168 meeting beginning Saturday evening, Jan. 13, and conti nuing 9:00 a.m. to 6:00 p.m. on Sunday, Jan. 14. Jim Petitte (j_petitte@ncsu.edu) is organizing the Poultry Workshop meeting. PAG-IX will be followed directly by the Agricultural Microbes Genome II meeting, Jan. 17-19 at the same location. See www.intl-pag.org/pag for more information. Limited travel support for NAGRP members is available: contact me at dodgson@msu.edu asap, if interested. Graduate students may compete for a Neal Jorgensen Travel Award of $300; see http://www.intl-pag.org/pag/grants.html or contact me (dodgson@msu.edu) before Oct. 15.

ISAG 2000, the 27^th International Conference on Animal Genetics was held July 22-26, 2000 in Minneapolis. Accompanying demonstrations against agricultural biotechnology and animal agriculture made local and national news headlines, but local organizers made remarkable efforts to minimize any disruption to the meeting itself and to present positive aspects of animal genetic research to the local media. An excellent group of plenary speakers discussed aspects of Comparative and Functional Genomics, Gene Mapping, Transgenics and Bioinformatics. Of special interest to poultry geneticists was the Chicken Gene Mapping Workshop chaired by Alain Vignal. Among the highlights were Alain's report on chicken cytogenetics studies (in press) at INRA which have linked almost all chicken microchromosomes down through number 31 to specific linkage groups on the Consensus Linkage Map, and Richard Crooij mans' description of the development of a new ChickAce genome database by Martien Groenen that should become available at the Wageningen web site (www.zod.wau.nl/vf/research/chicken/frame_chicken.html) in the coming year. Richard also described their progress towards building a complete BAC contig of chromosome 10 (about 40% complete as of the meeting) and related physical and comparative mapping results. Hans Cheng and Madeleine Douaire described chicken EST development projects in the U.S. (Joan Burnside, www.chickest.udel.edu) and Europe (U.K., Dave Burt; Israel, J. Hillel and A. Cahaner; the EC Chicken IMAGE consortium led by ( R. Zoorob, www.vjf.cnrs.fr/image/chicken/ ). Other highlights included reports by Hans on the Consensus Map (Groenen et al., Genome Res. 10:137-147, see our January newsletter), M. Tixier-Boichard on candidate gene mapping, H. Takahashi on the isolation of 1000 new chicken microsatellites (unfortunately, patented), and S. Weigend on chicken diversity studies by the EC AVIANDIV group.

WASHINGTON UPDATE: COMPETITIVE GRANTS FOR 2001

Funds have also been awarded for animal genome research through this year's Initiative for Future Agriculture and Food Systems (IFAFS) program. Unfortunately, total IFAFS genome funding was less than initially expected, ending up at about $7.5M for plant genomics, $4.7M for animal genomics, and $5M for microbial genomics with $2.6M for bioinformatics (most of which went to a single comparative grass genome database project). Included in the animal genome portion of IFAFS were funds for mapping growth genes in broiler chickens (Delaware-led, with Maryland, Georgia and INRA as cooperators), marker-assisted improvement of pork (Iowa State-led along with Illinois), functional genomics of bovine T-cells (Montana State-led, with Washington State and Minnesota), and genetic resistance to bovine paratuberculosis (Wisconsin). As noted previously, future IFAFS funding is likely to be blocked by Congress, so don't expect to see this program again, any time soon. More details on IFAFS 2000 awards can be found at www.reeusda.gov/1700/programs/IFAFS/ifafsawards.htm.

As noted previously, NIH has established a web site on "Model Organisms for Biomedical Research" at http://www.nih.gov/science/models/, which includes access to both information and funding opportunities for mammalian and non-mammalian models. The NIH Staff contact for the Trans-NIH Coordinating Committee for Non-Mammalian Models appears to have changed, now being Dr. Robert Finkelstein, National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke, (rf45c@nih.gov). In the meantime, the National Human Genome Research Institute within NIH is obviously looking around for things for its DNA Sequencing Centers to do, now that the human genome is done, or nearly so, and it has developed a program to sequence the genomes of other organisms (see http://www.nhgri.nih.gov/About_NHGRI/Der/model_org.htm). Most of the focus to date is on the mouse and rat genomes, but one of the participating Sequencing Centers, the NIH Intramural Sequencing Center, led by Dr. Eric Green, has initiated a Pilot Project: Exploration of Other Genomes in which the plan is to sequence several (three to four) homologous regions (about 1 Mb each) of the genomes of several vertebrates including chicken, zebrafish, cattle, pufferfish, pig, cat, dog, and others, to see how they compare in detail among themselves and to the human sequence.

Speaking of human genetics and model organisms, congratulations go to the NAGRP Sheep Genome Coordinator, Noelle Cockett, on the recent arrival of her daughter, Chantelle. Mother and daughter both are doing well at last report. Baby pictures from the proud parents are available on request (fanoelle@cc.usu.edu).

Gene primers: (Reminder) Two sets of PCR primer pairs complementary to chicken mRNAs are still available. In each case, a likely primer pair for PCR was derived based on DNA sequence data (mostly cDNA sequences, so they should be used for RT-PCR). See the Tables entitled "Chicken Gene Primers #1 and #2" under "Resources" (scroll down) at http://poultry.mph.msu.edu. Contact: (dodgson@.msu.edu) or (hcheng@.msu.edu). We'll send you up to 20 primer pairs of your choice. If you find them useful, let us know, and we can send more.

Plant and Animal Genome IX, joint with NC-168 and NAGRP annual meetings, Jan. 13-17, 2001, Town & Country Convention Center, San Diego, CA. More information above and/or see www.intl-pag.org/pag/ . Followed immediately by the Agricultural Microbes Genome II meeting, Jan. 17-19, at the same location and same information site.

6^th International Veterinary Immunology Symposium, July 15-20, 2001, Uppsala, Sweden. To receive the final announcement and registration form email ivis@slu.se.

Poultry Science Association annual meeting, July 24-28, 2001, Indianapolis, Indiana. See http://www.psa.uiuc.edu for more information.

We've exhausted our supply of the first shipment of robot-spotted filter sets of the chicken BAC library constructed at the Texas A&M BAC Center, using UCD 001 Jungle Fowl line as its DNA source. An order has been placed for some additional filter sets that should arrive any day. If interested, email me at dodgson@msu.edu. The new filter sets should contain the full array of over 38,000 BAC clones with BamHI-derived inserts. 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. In either case, once your clone of interest is identified by hybridization, individual clones can be obtain ed at cost from the BAC Center. The BAC Center is still in the process of doubling the library in size, using different restriction enzyme sites (HindIII and EcoRI), to insure complete coverage of the genome. We are also now negotiating with Research Genetics to construct PCR-ready plate, superplate, column, and row pools for those who wish to screen the library by PCR rather than hybridization. More information will be provided in the next newsletter and/or at the PAG-IX meeting. As noted previously, Martien Groenen's lab (primarily Richard Crooijmans) has also constructed a BAC library in collaboration with this the Texas A&M BAC Center . This library consists of approximately 50,000 BACs (HindIII inserts, average: 130 kb). See http://www.zod.wau.nl/vf/research/chicken/frame_chicken.html for more information. Fingerprint-based contig maps are presently under construction using both the BAC libraries described above. If you wish to purchase or use the Groenen-Crooijmans library, either contact the Texas A&M BAC Center (http://hbz.tamu.edu), the Groenen site URL given above, or the UK Human Genome Mapping Project Resource Center at http://www.hgmp.mrc.ac.uk which sells filter s ets of this library.

email: dodgson@msu.edu

email: hcheng@msu.edu