Pig Genome Update No. 54

angenmap@db.genome.iastate.edu
May 1, 2002

  1. British Pig Breeders Roundtable at the Wye College in Kent
  2. Bioinformatics meeting made easy!!
  3. Exploring Horizons for Domestic Animal Genomics is online
  4. Next NC-220 Annual Meeting of Swine Breeding Regional Research Project at Iowa State University
  5. New tools still are available.
  6. Upcoming meetings.

An excellent group of 75 scientists, students and pork industry people from 15 countries met April 17-19 at the British Pig Breeders Roundtable at the Wye College in Kent. A total of 18 talks were presented that covered various aspects of pig breeding including embryo technology advances, sustainable breeding programs, closed herd genetic improvement, QTL experiments with industry populations, imprinting, genes for meat quality, functional genomics and selection for lean growth. The casual atmosphere fostered interesting questions, debates and late night discussion sessions. This year's meeting will be the last to be organized by John King who has been organizing these every other year meetings since 1965. The 2004 meeting will be organized by the animal genetics group from the Roslin Institute.

GO TO TOP


Bioinformatics meeting made easy!! You and your colleagues and students may be interested in the day-long symposium, "Bioinformatics: Building Bridges", that will be held at the University of Minnesota on Friday, April 26, 2002. The symposium website is: http://www.binf.umn.edu/bisymp02/ . While this announcement is late, the webcast will be available as an indexed archive for two weeks after the symposium. The webcast will be available from: http://www.binf.umn.edu/bisymp02/webcast.html .

GO TO TOP


Were you unable to attend the symposium "Exploring Horizons for Domestic Animal Genomics" that was held at the National Academy of Science in Washington DC on February 19? You may now listen to and review the meeting at the web address http://www7.nationalacademies.org/banr/Exploring_Horizons_Workshop.html . The Real Audio player will be needed in order to run the media files.

Featured speakers included

There were also three group discussions involving: "Priorities for Genome Sequencing: Which Species?", "How Can We Facilitate Data Sharing and Access?" and "What are the Roles of the Public, Private, and NGO Sectors for Advancing Genomics Research?". We will keep you posted on the status of the workshop proceedings (provided by Mike Kisielewski).

GO TO TOP


The next NC-220 Annual Meeting of the swine breeding regional research project will be May 31-June 1 at Iowa State University. Hosted by Jack Dekkers and Max Rothschild, there will be interesting talks by some ISU scientists and experiment station reports. An evening of fun and applied probability exercises (horse racing) is planned for May 31. This extremely successful project is ending after many years and will be merged with the pig functional genetics project (NC-210). All interested persons can contact Jack Dekkers at jdekkers@iastate.edu .

GO TO TOP


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. More information on all sets of primers can be found at the web site: http://www.genome.iastate.edu/resources/fprimerintr.html . A new public porcine expressed sequence tagged (EST) database, a set of tools for EST analysis and a web query tool for public access to this database has been developed (http://pigest.genome.iastate.edu ).

GO TO TOP


Upcoming meetings (for more details see: http://www.genome.iastate.edu/community/meetings.html )
NC-220 meeting, May 31-June 1, Ames IA. For details contact Jack Dekkers at jdekkers@iastate.edu .

International Pig Veterinary Society meetings, Ames, IA June 2-5. For details see http://www.ipvs2002.vetmed.iastate.edu/ .

International Society of Animal Genetics, Göttingen, Germany, August 11-15, 2002. See http://www.gwdg.de/~bbrenig/ISAG2002.html for further information.

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

Additional items can be found at: http://www.agbiotechnet.com/calendar/index.asp .

GO TO TOP

Contributions to Pig Genome Update 55, including short meeting announcements, are always welcome. Please send by June 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
USDA/CSREES sponsored
Pig Genome Coordination Program
http://www.genome.iastate.edu/
Mailing list: angenmap@db.genome.iastate.edu


© US Pig Genome Coordination Program