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Pig Genome Newsletter #008
PIG GENOME UPDATE No. 8
September 1, 1994
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The ISAG meetings in Prague were excellent forums to present a great deal of
new results from pig gene mappers. Attendees at the conference included C.
Louis (MN), J. Lunney (BARC), C. Beattie, G. Rohrer, L. Alexander (MARC), B.
Kirkpatrick (WI), M. Rothschild, C. Tuggle (IA) and D. Frahm (CSRS). Most of
the major European pig gene mappers were also there. Several abstracts on pig
gene mapping were presented including the PiGMaP linkage map, identification of
new microsatellite markers, demonstrations of new physical mapping techniques
and results, QTL results and comparative gene mapping in the pig. If you are
interested in a particular abstract please feel free to contact me. The 2nd Pig
Gene Mapping Workshop (PGM 2) was held also and attended by 79 participants.
Results from several groups were presented. The PiGMaP linkage map contains 237
genes. Clay Center presented results that their map now contains 667 markers.
This makes the total near 900 markers and genes. Most of the USDA markers (71%)
are less than 5 cM from the next marker and the USDA estimate of the total size
of the porcine genome was approximately 2600 cM. The MARC group hopes to map an
additional 300+ markers within the next 6 months. The Nordic group also
presented their map which will appear in Genetics in August. As part of the
workshop I discussed the coordination efforts in the U.S. and also presented a
review of the gene mapping research being done at the 11 U.S. labs.
Several decisions were made at the workshop following discussions. Nomenclature
will follow the human nomenclature. Locus symbols for anonymous DNA markers
will not be assigned until they have been mapped. Confirmed status of markers
and genes will follow rules used in human mapping also. The workshop committee
for the next meeting will be Alan Archibald, Merte Fredholm, Gary Rohrer, Joel
Gellin and Max Rothschild.
The 5th World Congress on Genetics Applied to Livestock Production was held in
Guelph and was extremely well attended. Over 1200 delegates were there,
including B. Kirkpatrick, J. Lunney, M. Rothschild, A. Clutter, D. Pomp, J.
Keele and D. Frahm from the U.S. swine gene mapping group and several
international pig gene mappers. This meeting happens every 4 years and this
year there was over a 50% increase in attendees. Of special note was the
increase in papers and attendance for the gene mapping, genetic marker and
polymorphism papers. An overview of pig gene mapping was provided by Alan
Archibald. We had a very good workshop on QTLs in which Chris Haley presented
some of his thoughts. Of particular interest and excitement were the papers
that presented major genes and markers for traits. In pigs, there were two
statistical papers presenting evidence for a major gene in Meishan pigs that
controlled intramuscular fat (marbling) and a gene that affects production of
Paris Hams. In terms of molecular work, two papers were presented. Evidence for
a major gene for litter size in pigs was presented by M. Rothschild et al.
(ISU). This gene, the estrogen receptor gene has been mapped to chromosome 1.
Results demonstrated a 1.5 to 2.1 pig advantage for animals heterozygous or
homozygous for the favorable allele. In another paper, Edfors-Lilja et al.
(Sweden) presented evidence for a gene on the other end of chromosome 1 which
controls white blood cell count. Additional markers were found on chromosome 8
which were associated with other measures related to natural immunity. These
results demonstrated that QTL detection has come a long way since the last
Congress four years ago. The next Congress will be in Australia in 1998 or
1999.
Database developments continue to move along nicely. The co-editorship between
the PiGMaP (Archibald) and U.S. (Rothschild) coordinators of the pig database
is working well and over 200 publication entries will be in the database soon.
Alan Archibald and myself met twice, once with Alan Hillyard (at Prague) and
once with Lizhen Wang (at Guelph). Some of the new changes in the database will
be discussed at our September meeting. A large number of new users have signed
up for the database. At present, nodes for the database exist in the U.S.,
Scotland and New Zealand. Some discussion was made to standardize the name of
all the database nodes to PiGBASE. This is a topic for our NC-210 meeting in
September. In addition to the U.S. pig gene mapping WWW Home page, the PIGBASE
WWW Home page has been developed. Access to it is possible through the U.S. pig
gene mapping WWW.
Some very good recent publications on database development by the USDA Clay
Center group (John Keele, Gary Rohrer, Craig Beattie et al.) have been
published in a new journal, Journal of Computational Biology. In addition, the
recent issue of Science (vol 265, August 12, 1994) has some interesting papers
on WWW and Mosaic.
The NAGRP meeting and the NC-210 meeting will be held on September 22-23 in
Minneapolis at the Radisson Hotel (phone: 612-379-8888, mention Animal Genome
Project). Please plan to attend if you are a NC-210 member or an interested
industry person. NC-210 members are to prepare written reports as outlined in
the material Joan Lunney recently sent out. The NAGRP meeting looks quite good
and there will be one speaker on the human genome project and another from
Applied Biosystems to discuss new developments in technology. We owe a big
thanks to Dr. Jerry Dodgson for arranging and planning the meetings in
Minneapolis. After this meeting will be the Chromosome 6 Workshop. On October
1-3 will be a human genome meeting in Washington D.C. Other meeting dates and
details will be presented in the newsletter in the future. If you have a
meeting to advertise or interest in knowing about particular meetings, please
contact me as I will be attending several of them.
Please note that I will no longer be using my 294-3629 phone number. I can be
reached at 515-294- 6202. I have now left my half time job as Assistant
Director in the Iowa Agriculture Experiment Station and returned to the Animal
Science faculty full time. While the last 4 years have been fun I have planned
this move for some time and it should give me more time for the coordination
efforts and my research.
Contributions to Pig Genome Update 9 are always welcome. Please send by the
20th of October.
Hope to see many of you at the meetings in Minneapolis.
Max F. Rothschild
National Pig Genome Coordinator
225 Kildee Hall
Department of Animal Science
Iowa State University
Ames, Iowa 50011
Phone: 515-294-6202
Fax: 515-294-2401
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