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Pig Genome Newsletter #017
Pig Genome Update No. 17
March 1, 1996
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Plant Genome IV was a huge success and was attended by three members of the
NRSP-8. The purpose of the visit by M. Dentine, H. Cheng and M. Rothschild was
to follow through on the decision at the 1996 annual meeting of the NSRP-8
Technical Committee to accept an invitation by the organizers of the Plant
Genome Meeting to join them to form a combined Animal and Plant Genome Meeting.
We met with the organizers to begin planning the 1997 joint meeting. An
informal poll of the meeting attendees indicates that this meeting is the
premier international meeting for anyone working on plant genetics. This
feeling is strengthened by the fact that the meeting attracts many people
throughout the world and attendance has steadily grown to about 700 attendees
this year. The philosophy of the meeting is to have a few presentations each
morning and afternoon but leave plenty of time for networking, viewing of
posters and commercial exhibits, and free time to enjoy the weather and sights.
This is reflected in the format of the meeting which has evolved to consist of
a combination of plenary lectures, invited talks, posters, and workshops. The
plenary lectures are often given by people outside of the field to stimulate
discussion (e.g., Dr. Stephen O'Brien on comparative mapping and Dr. Mike
Lovett on positional cloning) while many of the invited talks are given by
people within the plant community. There is an abundance of posters. Workshops
covered many topics and there were 16 workshops this year.
Scherago International is a professional conference organizer and has been
hired to run the meeting. Traditionally, the meeting has been in January to
take advantage of the relatively cheap airfares during this time of the year
for both national and international travelers. It is held at the San Diego Town
and Country which has a convention center, been recently renovated, and is
relatively cheap. The Town and Country is easily accessible to the San Diego
Airport by shuttle and is adjacent to a large shopping mall and many cheaper
hotels. It is close to such attractions as Old Town San Diego, the San Diego
Zoo, the Wild Animal Park, Sea World, etc. Registration last year was $300 for
everyone except $100 for students and included an abstract book, the final
program, continental breakfast in the mornings, coffee breaks, evening
receptions, and one dinner at the end of the meeting. The organizers of the
meeting are primarily responsible for setting up the scientific agenda which
includes the topics and invited speakers. The organizers of this meeting
includes Stephen Heller (ARS Informatics, Beltsville, MD), Susan McCouch (rice
disease, Cornell), Michael Gale (John Innes Center, UK), and Doug Bigwood
(National Agricultural Library, Beltsville, MD). At our meeting with the
organizers and people from Scherago International, we discussed how the Animal
Genome Meeting would be integrated. Basically, it was agreed that the format of
the meeting would not change and as much as possible, have joint plenary
sessions for both plant and animal researchers. From our group, we felt that it
would be best to make this meeting fairly comprehensive and include other
animal species (e.g., horse, dog, cat, fish, etc.). For 1997 the meeting will
probably start Sunday January 12 with all day species' technical committee
meetings for cattle and sheep, poultry, and swine. There could also be possible
workshops for horse, fish, wildlife, etc. as desired. There would also be an
opening reception. On Monday and Tuesday there would be the mix of joint
plenary speakers and also seperate speakers for animal and plant subjects. Some
of these might be joint and others concurrent sessions. There would be
considerable time for posters and networking. Workshops could be held in the
evening and on Tuesday night there would be the NSRP-8 business meeting. We
would finish up on Wednesday so you could either leave or stay for the plant
talks. We wish to make 1997 a successful meeting for the animal researchers and
need your input. Of immediate concern is the topics to be discussed and a list
of potential speakers. Any suggestions you have would be greatly appreciated.
Make your plans now to attend.
A recent PiGMaP meetig was held in Amsterdam. The meeting covered progress on
the international gene mapping efforts. Results for the PiGMaP now include over
600 genes and markers. A second version of the PiGMaP will be submitted for
publication in the near future. Discussion centered on research progress and on
planning new diversity projects.
Fluorescent primers for genotyping are coming. At the 1995 meeting of NC-210
(Mapping the Pig Genome) and NRSP-8 (Pig Genome Technical Committee), a
committee was appointed to develop a list of microsatellite markers that would
be useful as a QTL screening set with fluorescently labeled primers. The
committee, composed of Brian Kirkpatrick (Wisconsin), Chris Tuggle (Iowa State)
and Daniel Pomp (Nebraska), have developed a list of 60 primer sets based on
the following criteria: spacing throughout the genome; marker detection quality
using ABI equipment; and informativeness. Much use was made of information
kindly shared by Martien Groenen (Wageningen) and Denis Milan (Toulouse). The
U.S. Pig Genome Coordinator has agreed to fund the synthesis and distribution
of these primer sets. Each primer pair will be composed of one fluorescently
labeled and one unlabelled primer. Use of all available dyes will facilitate
multiplexing. Synthesis is ongoing and should be completed by the end of March.
If you wish to receive a set, please contact the U.S. Pig Coordinator directly.
Congratulations to all of you that have helped to make the WWW gene mapping
pages so successful. As you well know it may be difficult to find things on the
internet and there are several directories that help users. The NAGRP Chicken
and Pig Gene Mapping home pages were each recently recognized as a "4 Star"
site in Magellan, McKinley's internet directory of 1.5 million sites of which
40,000 have been reviewed. This is the highest rating possible. In addition the
USDA home pages for the Biotechnology Center of the National Agricultural
Library and the gene mapping pages for MARC were also awarded the same rating.
Our Pig Genome home page continues to be updated. It serves as a gateway for
other databases, information on gene mapping, newsletters, meeting updates and
much much more. This is your home page so please give us your ideas to include.
News from the National Agricultural Library. Public accesses to the livestock
animal genome databases at NAL have increased steadily since September 1995. In
January 1996, over 3,200 people accessed the livestock animal genome WWW page
at: http://tetra.gig.usda.gov:8400/. The pig genome research community has
particularly embraced the PigBASE node at NAL. Accesses to PigBASE have
increased 8-fold from 72 in September 1995 to 573 in January 1996. Thanks for
your support! As always, we welcome your comments and suggestions about the
livestock animal genome WWW server at NAL. Please send email to:
help@plasmid.nalusda.gov (kindly provided by Gail Juvik).
The HUGO Comparative Genome Workshop which was held on December 3-6 on Frasier
Island, Australia will be written up in the HUGO Comparative Genome Mapping
Committee report to be published in Mammalian Genome early this year. It will
include a report on pig gene mapping. The entire report should be quite
interesting.
This summer will be an important time for meetings as the the International
Society of Animal Genetics (ISAG) meeting will be held in Tours, France from
July 21-26, 1996. The meeting includes posters, special talks and several
workshops. Of special interest is the Pig Gene Mapping Workshop which is held
every two years under the auspices of ISAG. The workshop will be on July 22,
1996. The current ISAG pig gene mapping committee is - Alan Archibald (Roslin),
Merete Fredholm (Copenhagen), Joel Gellin (Toulouse), Gary Rohrer (Clay Center)
and Max Rothschild (Ames). Since travel to the meeting is expected to be
expensive there may be some partial support for active members of the swine
genome committee. Please contact me if you need some support.
Several of the meetings reported in Pig Genome Update including the Swine in
Biomedical Research and the HUGO Comparative Genome Workshop have received some
funding from the U.S. Swine Genome Coordination effort. If you have a
worthwhile meeting and would like support please visit with the Coordinator
concerning your request.
The ISAG Pig Workshop in Ghent and the The HUGO Comparative Genome Workshop
each printed small sets of abstracts. We have sent out several copies to a
number of peopele. Anyone wishing a copy of the pig abstracts can request
copies free of charge by please contacting me at mfrothsc@iastate.edu .
Got an idea to share resources? We are always looking for ideas from pig gene
mappers. In the past people have suggested sharing primers, DNA and information
about databases. We already have an extensive list of shared primeres and this
year will be providing flurescent primers. Other ideas of services that can be
provided as part of the coordination effort are under consideration. Your
thoughts would be appreciated.
Educational efforts continue to be important for all of us. In the past several
items including bibliographies on gene mapping and workshops and written
materials on gene mapping have been shared in this newsletter. Recently an
undergraduate honors student at Iowa State University, Ms. Laura Kingdom,
designed a WWW site to teach students and producers about pig gene mapping. The
site is called PIG GENES and can be reached at
http://www.public.iastate.edu/~pigmap/pigmap-edu. If other such sites exist
please let me know.
Upcoming meetings:
* Midwest ASAS/ADSA meetings, March 18-20, 1996, Des Moines, IA
* Genetic Susceptibility & Complex Traits, Vancouver, Canada, April 17-19,
phone: 212-726-9281
* 12th European Colloquium on Cytogenetics in Domestic Animals, Zaragoza,
Spain June 25-28, 1996, contact M. Victoria Arruga 34-76-76-16-62.
* XXV International Conference on Animal Genetics, International Society of
Animal Genetics, Vinci Congress Centre, Tours, France, July 21-26, 1996,
contact guerin@biotech.jouy.inra.fr for details
* Allerton II, Genetic Analysis of Economically Important Traits in
Livestock, Allerton Park, Illinois, November 1996, contact
h-lewin@ux1.cso.uiuc.edu for details
* Animal Genome Meeting (in conjunction with Plant Genome V), San Diego, Ca,
January 12-15, 1997, see future Angenmap announcements for details
* Gordon Conference on Quantitative Genetics, Ventura, Ca, February 9-14,
1997, contact M. Dentine at dentine@calshp.cals.wisc.edu
* 9th International Congress on Genes, Gene Families and Isozymes, San
Antonio, TX , contact isozyme@darwin.sfbr.org for details
Contributions to Pig Genome Update 18 including short meeting announcements are
always welcome. Please send by the 10th of April.
Max F. Rothschild
U.S. Pig Genome Coordinator
225 Kildee Hall
Department of Animal Science
Iowa State University
Ames, Iowa 50011
Phone: 515-294-6202
Fax: 515-294-2401
mfrothsc@iastate.edu
Paid for by funds from the NRSP-8 USDA/CSREES sponsored pig genome coordination
program
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