From dodgson@msu.edu Mon Oct 26 13:56:20 2009 From: Jerry Dodgson To: Multiple Recipients of Subject: POULTRY GENOME NEWSLETTER 2009, Issue No. 4, October, 2009 Date: Mon, 26 Oct 2009 13:56:20 -0500 Poultry Genome Newsletters are distributed through the Angenmap Discussion Group. HAPPY BIRTHDAY, BILL!! Noted poultry geneticist, Bill Muir celebrates his 60th birthday on Oct. 25. All of his friends wish him a Happy Birthday and many more to come. (See the .pdf version at http://poultry.mph.msu.edu/newsltrs/newsltrs.htm for a recent photo of Bill. PAG XVIII & NAGRP/NC-1170 Meeting PAG-XVIII and the NRSP-8/NC-1008 meetings will be held again in San Diego, Jan. 9-13, 2010. See http://www.intl-pag.org/ for information. The abstract submission deadline is Nov. 2. Scheduled PAG XVIII plenary speakers include Eric Schadt, Peter Raven, Howard Jacob, Evan Eichler, Joanne Chory, Robb Fraley and Vicki Chandler. The NRSP-8/NC-1008 Poultry Workshop will begin bright and early at 8:30 a.m. on Saturday, Jan. 9, wrapping up at mid-day on Sunday. The poultry workshop will be co-chaired by Huanmin Zhang and Eric Wong. The NRSP8 Animal Genome Workshop and business meeting will be held 1:30-6:00 p.m. on Sunday with invited speakers: Randall Prather (Utility of Genetically Modified Swine), Noelle Cockett (Recent Advancements in Sheep Genomics), and James MacLeod (Analyses of the equine mRNA transcriptome using RNA-seq data). As usual, coordinators have some funds to help with travel support for NAGRP members or their lab members - contact us ASAP. (Remember, the deadline for reduced registration is Nov. 2.) Students are encouraged to apply for the Neal Jorgensen Travel Award for poultry (see the PAG website listed above). For those arriving early, the AFRI Animal Genome, Genetics and Breeding program Project Directors' Meeting (open to all) will take place on Friday, Jan. 7, just prior to the NRSP-8 and PAG-XVIII meetings. Update on Progress in Sequencing the Turkey Genome A preliminary draft sequence of the turkey genome using high throughput sequencing technologies has been assembled by the group led by Otto Folkerts, Rami Dalloul (VBI-VaTech), Julie Long, Curt Van Tassel, Tad Sonstegard (USDA-ARS-Beltsville), Aleksey Zimin and Steven Salzberg (U. of Maryland). A manuscript describing the sequence will soon be submitted, and the sequence will be made public in the near future. We have also extensively annotated and updated our comparative chicken-turkey BAC map to assist in assembling the sequence contigs and scaffolds onto the turkey chromosomes, and these data are posted at http://poultry.mph.msu.edu/resources/Resources.htm. This map contains over 50,000 turkey BAC alignments with their most likely orthologous location in the chicken genome sequence (Build 2). In addition, the turkey BAC alignments can be accessed in a graphical fashion using Turkey GBrowse at: http://birdbase.net/cgi-bin/gbrowse/turkey10/ . WASHINGTON UPDATE: GOOD NEWS FOR A CHANGE (or maybe a change for the good?) As of early October, USDA-CSREES is now the National Institute for Food & Agriculture (NIFA, http://www.nifa.usda.gov/), with Dr. Roger Beachy as the new NIFA Director. Among other things, NIFA administers the AFRI competitive grant program (Agriculture and Food Research Initiative, http://www.nifa.usda.gov/funding/afri/afri.html). The recently passed USDA appropriations bill (H.R.2997) provides substantial increases to funding for USDA-ARS (up 6.3%) and NIFA (up 12.2%) with the AFRI component of NIFA being increased $61 million (30% increase) to $262.4M. This is the first significant increase to the competitive grant program in several years. It remains to be seen how the increase will be distributed to the various grant programs. A National Research Council panel that reviewed the future of the life sciences recently released its report "A New Biology for the 21st Century" that listed four major targets for multidisciplinary research including sustainable food production, ecosystem function and biodiversity, sustainable energy production and understanding individual health. Although agricultural research is relevant to all four targets, the high profile of food production research is particularly noteworthy. ON THE ROAD AGAIN. UPCOMING MEETINGS: Updated meeting info. is also available at http://www.animalgenome.org/share/mtg_chic.html. Tenth International Long-oligonucleotide Microarray Workshop, Jan. 3-8, 2010, U. of Arizona, Tucson, AZ. For further details and to register, please contact David Galbraith (galbraith@arizona.edu) or Georgina Lambert (georgina@cals.arizona.edu). Plant & Animal Genome Conference, PAG XVIII, Jan. 9-13, 2010, Town & Country Hotel, San Diego, CA. Information available at http://www.intl- pag.org/ and see above. Advances in Genome Biology & Technology meeting, Feb. 24-27, 2010, Marco Island, FL. See www.agbt.org for more info. Poultry Science Association Meeting (joint with ASAS and ADSA) July 11-15, 2010, Denver, CO. See http://www.adsa.asas.org/meetings/2010/ for more info. The 9th World Congress on Genetics Applied to Livestock Production (WCGALP), Aug. 1-6, 2010, Leipzig, Germany. For more details visit http://www.wcgalp2010.org/. POULTRY GENOME NEWSLETTER ARCHIVE Poultry Genome Newsletters are distributed electronically through Angenmap, the Animal Genome Discussion Group (http://www.animalgenome.org/community/discuss.html). Previous newsletters are archived as .pdf files at http://poultry.mph.msu.edu/newsltrs/newsltrs.htm. PLEASE PROVIDE YOUR INPUT The Poultry Coordinators are always glad to hear from NRSP-8 members and other readers about ways that we can improve the coordination effort or provide resources that are needed and with which we may be able to help. Also, let us know if you have items of general interest to the poultry genetics community that we can include in this Newsletter. PICTURES and GRAPHICS are especially welcome for our new .pdf versions of the newsletter. Supported by Multi-State Research Funds to the National Research Service Program: NRSP-8. National Animal Genome Research Program, Muquarrab Qureshi, NAGRP Director, USDA-NIFA