P I G G E N O M E U P D A T E __________________________________________________________________ A Bimonthly Newsletter of the U.S. Pig Genome Coordination Program ************** No. 55 ************** * * * * * July 1, 2002 * ************************************** =========================================================================== 1. The NC-220 Annual Meeting Held at Iowa State University ............. 12 2. The IPVS at Ames and the World Pork Expo at Des Moines, IA .......... 11 3. Draft of Renewal Proposal for NRSP-8 in Progess ..................... 10 4. Personnel Update in PGCP ............................................ 16 5. New Tools Are Being Considered for Sharing .......................... 14 6. Upcoming Meetings ................................................... 26 =========================================================================== The NC-220 annual meeting of the swine breeding regional research project was May 31-June 1 at Iowa State University. Hosted by Jack Dekkers and Max Rothschild, there were many interesting talks by scientists from several experiment station reports dealing with genomics. This extremely successful project (and predecessors) ended after 65 years and will be merged with the pig functional genetics project (NC-210) to form NC-1004 on October 1, 2002. A Chair, Vice Chair and Secretary, will be elected soon to help run the project. The new administrative advisor is Associate Dean Dr. Bert E. Stromberg from the University of Minnesota. Messages for the group can be posted at the listserv at NC1004@lists.ahc.umn.edu. o o o o o o o o o o o The Power of Pigs!! The International Pig Veterinary Society (IPVS) met in Ames, Iowa June 2-5 followed by the World Pork Expo June 6-8 in Des Moines, Iowa. The IPVS meetings brought over 1,900 participants to discuss aspects of veterinary medicine related to health, management and swine production. The Role of Genomics was a featured talk among several other presentations on a variety of subjects including several on specific diseases. The World Pork Expo featured production and health talks, good barbecue and a number of opportunities to discuss genetics with the world's leading breeding companies and supplies of genetic testing. o o o o o o o o o o o Its time to write the renewal proposal for NRSP-8! The new objectives will focus on: 1. Mapping and comparative genomics as they lead to the development and use of full genome sequences; 2. Functional genomics; and 3. Informatics. Cathy Ernst will coordinate the overall writing team. Draft proposals are already being circulated and will be revised over the summer with E-1 (effort) forms collected from Ag Experiment Stations by October. The final and complete proposal must be submitted to Area Administrators by Dec. 1, 2002. More information is available at http://www.wisc.edu/ncra/manual.htm. o o o o o o o o o o o A big thanks goes to Dr. Yuandan Zhang who has served as our web page manager and assistant to the Pig Genome Coordinator for the past two years. Yuandan will be starting his new research position in the Animal Genetics and Breeding Unit, The University of New England in Armidale, NSW, Australia. For those of you who wish to send him your regards his email will be: yzhang4@metz.une.edu.au. As you perhaps may remember, Dr. Zhiliang Hu, previously served at this job during 1997-1999 and has been serving as a part time consultant to us during the past three years. He has now agreed to take more responsibilities as the Database Manager and Assistant to the Coordinator, among his other commitments. We are having new discussions on future developments on the Pig Genome Database. If you have anything to suggest or have any questions about the web site or database, you can reach him at hu@db.genome.iastate.edu. o o o o o o o o o o o New tools are being considered for sharing. One of the projects the US Pig Genome Coordinator is now working on is to make either gene chips or microarray materials available to each lab at a reduced cost. To date several parties have suggested some interest. If you have interest, please contact the US Pig Genome Coordinator at mfrothsc@iastate.edu. In addition, new pig microsatellite diversity primers (set XI) were made in response to requests and suggestions concerning pig diversity research and selected from markers across all 19 pig chromosomes. See http://www.genome.iastate.edu/resources/fprimerintr.html for more information on all sets of primers. A new public porcine expressed sequence tagged (EST) database, a set of tools for EST analysis and a web query tool to this database has been developed (http://pigest.genome.iastate.edu). o o o o o o o o o o o Upcoming meetings (for more details see: http://www.genome.iastate.edu/community/meetings.html) 43rd Short Course in Medical and Experimental Mammalian Genetics, July 15- 26, 2002, Jackson Laboratory, Bar Harbor, Maine. See www.jax.org/courses/ for more info. International Society of Animal Genetics, Göttingen, Germany, August 11-15, 2002. See http://www.gwdg.de/~bbrenig/ISAG2002.html for further information. The ISAG Pig Mapping Workshop will be held on Thursday, August 15, 2002. The first session (10:30-12:00) will have invited presentations relating to the topic "Current Status of Swine Genomics: Preparing for a Genome Sequencing Project". Session 2 will have presentations of highlighted posters presented at the conference (13:30-15:30). 2nd Symposium on Candidate Genes for Animal Health, August 16- 18, Montpellier, France. Information at http://cgah.cirad.fr 7th World Congress of Genetics Applied to Livestock Production, August 19-23, 2002, Montpellier, France. See http://www.wcgalp.org for more information. Plant, Animal and Microbial Genome XI, joint with NC-168 and NAGRP annual meetings, Jan. 11-15, 2003, Town & Country Convention Center, San Diego, CA. For more information see information on the web at www.intl-pag.org . Additional items can be found at: http://www.agbiotechnet.com/calendar/index.asp. <> <> <> <> <> <> <> <> <> <> <> Contributions to Pig Genome Update 56 including short meeting announcements are always welcome. Please send by August 10. Max Rothschild U.S. Pig Genome Coordinator 2255 Kildee Hall, Department of Animal Science Iowa State University Ames, Iowa 50011 Phone: 515-294-6202, Fax: 515-294-2401 mfrothsc@iastate.edu cc: Dick Frahm, CSREES and Caird Rexroad II, ARS ============================================================================ U.S. PIG GENOME COORDINATION PROJECT +-----------------------------------+ | Paid for by funds from the NRSP-8 | Web: http://www.genome.iastate.edu | USDA/CSREES sponsored Pig Genome | Mailing list: | Coordination Program | angenmap@db.genome.iastate.edu +-----------------------------------+ ============================================================================