This issue of the newsletter appears a few weeks early, so that we can wish a Happy Holiday Season to our readers and as a final reminder about PAG-IX (see below). For those who see this January 1 as the Turn of the Century, if not the "real" new Millenium, best wishes for a big celebration and a successful and productive next 100 (or 1000) years!

It still is possible to register for PAG-IX; see www.intl-pag.org/pag/registration.html. PAG-IX will be at the Town & Country Convention Center in San Diego, CA (www.towncountry.com). For those of us snowed in in the Midwest, San Diego is looking more inviting all the time. The Poultry Workshop/NC-168 meeting begins at 6:00 p.m. on Saturday evening, Jan. 13, and continues 9:00 a.m. to 6:00 p.m. on Sunday, Jan. 14. If you plan to present and haven't already done so, please contact Marlene Emara (emara@UDel.Edu) or Jim Petitte (j_petitte@ncsu.edu). If you arrive early enough, Marlene is trying to arrange an early dinner at 4:00 p.m. (perfect for those of us whose stomachs are still on East Coast time) on Saturday before the Workshop (contact Marlene to be sure to be included). PAG-IX will continue through Wed. evening, Jan. 17, and 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.

Congratulations to Ms. Wei Liu of Iowa State University, this year's winner of the Neal Jorgensen Travel Award for Poultry. Ms. Liu's abstract is entitled "Candidate Genes for Vaccine and Challenge Response to Salmonella enteriditis in Young Chicks". (No "hanging chads" were involved in Ms. Liu's selection and the Coordinators vigorously deny any inherent bias on their part towards abstracts referring to young chicks.)

MEA CULPA: Big-EST Error in last issue's ISAG 2000 REPORT

In the last Newsletter, our ISAG 2000 Report inaccurately attributed coordination of the EC Chicken IMAGE consortium (one of several chicken EST projects underway in Europe) to J.-M. Buerstedde, when, in fact, this effort is coordinated by Rima Zoorob and the correct URL for Chicken IMAGE is http://www.vjf.cnrs.fr/image/chicken. Apologies to Dr. Zoorob and anyone who may have been misled. My only excuse is that information was coming fast and furious at the Workshop, and it becomes more difficult to follow along as one's eyesight decays, and you no longer can see the slides and your notepad using the same glasses.

The announcement of the 2001 USDA NRI Competitive Grants Program has been posted at www.reeusda.gov/nri, and the deadline for the Animal Genome and Genetic Mechanisms Program is Feb. 15, 2001. Poultry geneticists are strongly encouraged to apply! Unfortunately, Congress once again cut the NRI budget in the Senate/House Conference Committee to only $106 million (down from $119M last year). As a result, the Animal Genome Tools/Reagents program has been cancelled. Contrary to what we were hearing as of the last issue, only standard grants will be available, at least for this year.

On a more optimistic note, at least one more year of Initiative for Future Agriculture and Food Systems (IFAFS) grant funding will be available. As described previously, the IFAFS program includes an animal genome component, that generally funds consortium-based grants in the $0.5M to $2M range. $4.7M was awarded last year in animal genomics, including 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). More details on IFAFS 2000 awards can be found at www.reeusda.gov/1700/programs/IFAFS/ifafsawards.htm. One change in IFAFS this year is that the lead institution for all applications must be a Land-Grant (1862, 1890, 1994), or Hispanic Serving Institution. The 2001 IFAFS RFP is expected otherwise to be similar to last year's, but the projected (still tentative) grant deadline is March 16. For more information see http://www.reeusda.gov/ifafs/.

Microsatellite primer kits: Information on microsatellite primer pairs and a simple order form can be found at http://poultry.mph.msu.edu/resources/microkits.htm. We are now out of stock of kit #3, but recently obtained a new streamlined replacement kit #1/2 that contains the most polymorphic and evenly distributed markers in kits #1 and #2 (including all of those that are anchor markers on the Groenen et al. Consensus Map, Genome Res. 10:137-147, 2000). Kits #4 to #6 and the Population Tester Kit (for line and/or parentage characterization or for testing the utility of chicken microsatellites in other avian species [not generally recommended]) remain available, although these kits are getting fairly old, and some problems, especially with the dye labels, may result. Contact: (dodgson@.msu.edu) or (hcheng@.msu.edu). New users are asked to request only one kit at a time. Thanks.

Please note: we're always anxious to obtain new chicken (or turkey) microsatellite sequence data and will consider purchasing new kits based on such sequences to make available to the poultry gene mapping community, pending available funding. Any suggestions are welcomed.

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.

The previous Poultry Genome Mapping Homepage Webmaster, Russell Coleman, has recently departed with his wife and young son to the "frozen tundra" of Edmonton, Alberta. Russell did a great job for us, and we'll miss him. Taking over is Michael Joseph (mic@msu.edu), a MSU undergraduate with considerable previous web experience. If you have web-related questions or suggestions as to improving the homepage, please contact Michael.

An excellent and encyclopedic review entitled "First Report on Chicken Genes and Chromosomes" will appear shortly in Cytogenetics and Cell Genetics. Authors are M. Schmid, I. Nanda, M. Guttenbach, C. Steinlein, H. Hoehn, M. Schartl, T. Haaf, S. Weigend, R. Fries, J-M. Buerstedde, K. Wimmers, D.W. Burt, J. Smith, S. A’Hara, A. Law, D.K. Griffin, N. Bumstead, J. Kaufman, P.A. Thomson, T.A. Burke, M.A.M. Groenen, R.P.M.A. Crooijmans, A. Vignal, V. Fillion, M. Morisson, F. Pitel, M. Tixier-Boichard, K. Ladjali-Mohammedi, J. Hillel, A. Mäki-Tanila, H.H. Cheng, M.E. Delany, J. Burnside, and S. Mizuno. Among its many highpoints are an updated version of the Consensus Linkage Map (Groenen et al., Genome Res. 10:137-147, 2000), a detailed listing of FISH-identified microchromosomal linkage groups, and thorough descriptions of avian sex chromosomes and avian telomere biology. Keep an eye out for this paper. (Thanks to Michael Schmid, of the Department of Human Genetics, U. of Würzburg, m.schmid@biozentrum.uni-wuerzburg.de, for taking the lead in assembling this report and for agreeing that notice of the paper could be included in the Newsletter.)

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.

Gordon Conference on Quantitative Genetics and Genomics, February 18-23, 2001, Ventura, CA. Further info at: http://nitro.biosci.arizona.edu/gordon2001.html.

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, to be held jointly with the meetings of the American Dairy Science Association, the American Society of Animal Science, and the Reciprocal Meat Conference of the American Meat Science Association, all combined as the International Animal Agriculture and Food Science Conference. Abstract deadline is Feb. 13, 2001. See http://www.fass.org/fass01 or http://www.psa.uiuc.edu for more information.

International Society of Animal Genetics, Göttingen, Germany, summer, 2002. See http://www.wisc.edu/animalsci/isag/index.html for further information.

7^th World Congress of Genetics Applied to Livestock Production, August 19-23, 2002, Montpellier, France. See http://wcgalp.toulouse.inra.fr for more information.

A small supply has now been obtained of new 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. If interested, email me at dodgson@msu.edu. The new filter sets 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. Unfortunately, the cost of filter sets has risen significantly due to forces outside our control. In either case, once your clone of interest is identified by hybridization, individual clones can be obtained at cost from the BAC Center. Another 23,000 chicken BACs have very recently been constructed using EcoRI inserts (into pECBAC1) and work is underway on a similar number of HindIII insert BACs, to insure complete coverage of the genome. Once completed, we intend to purchase and make available filter sets containing BACs from all three sublibraries. In addition, for those wishing to use PCR rather than filter hybridization to screen for your gene(s) of interest, a copy of the first 30,000 BAC library (equivalent to the previously provided filter sets) has been sent to Research Genetics, who are constructing PCR-ready, superplate, column, and row pool DNAs. As soon as these DNA sets become available at Research Genetics, we will add this new resource to our "Resources" section of our homepage (http://poultry.mph.msu.edu/resources/resources.htm). As noted previously, Martien Groenen and Richard Crooijmans have also constructed a BAC library in collaboration with this the Texas A&M BAC Center (Crooijmans et al., Mammalian Genome 11: 360-363, 2000). 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. 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 sets of this library.

We're 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 March 15 to be sure it gets into the next issue.

Jerry Dodgson, Poultry Coordinator, Dept. of Microbiology, Giltner Hall, Michigan State University, East Lansing, MI 48824, email: dodgson@msu.edu

Hans Cheng, Co-Coord., USDA-ARS ADOL 3606 E. Mt. Hope Ave., East Lansing, MI 48823, email: hcheng@msu.edu