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![Photo: Rainbow trout.](https://webarchive.library.unt.edu/eot2008/20090509201958im_/http://www.ars.usda.gov/is/pr/2009/trout090304.jpg)
Detailed maps of rainbow trout genes and how they
relate to key traits like disease resistance and growth are being produced by
Agricultural Research Service scientists and their counterparts in France.
Photo courtesy of U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service.
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ARS, Cooperators Produce New DNA Maps for Rainbow
Trout
By Sharon
Durham March 4, 2009
New detailed maps of rainbow trout genes and how they relate to key
traits like disease resistance, stress response, and growth are being produced
by Agricultural Research Service (ARS)
scientists and their counterparts in France.
By combining information from genetic maps and physical maps, a more
complete picture of the trout genome is created, enabling scientists to
pinpoint genes that affect key aquaculture production traits in rainbow trout.
Rainbow trout is one of the most important aquaculture species in the
United States and worldwide, but little is known about its genetic makeup.
ARS geneticist
Yniv
Palti, at the
National
Center for Cool and Cold Water Aquaculture in Leetown, WV, has an ongoing
collaboration with the French
National Institute for Agricultural Research scientist Carine Genet to
produce the integrated map.
The first-generation physical map of rainbow trout was produced in a
collaborative effort by Palti and Ming-Cheng Luo and Yuqin Hu of the
University of California-Davis.
A physical map shows the specific locations of a species’ genes and/or
markers on each chromosome. These types of maps are important for finding
physical linkages between traits and genes.
According to Palti, they used variations and similarities among
180,000 trout chromosome fragments to order them on the physical map. Since it
is possible to isolate specific genes from chromosome fragments, scientists can
now reconstruct the order of the genes and determine whether those specific
genes explain certain traits in rainbow trout that influence growth and disease
resistance.
Genet sequenced important segments of 100,000 of those fragments and
is using the sequence information to design new genetic markers currently being
genotyped in Palti’s lab and subsequently being added to the ARS genetic
map.
Read
more about international research partnerships between ARS and cooperators
in the March 2009 issue of Agricultural Research magazine.
ARS is the principal intramural scientific research agency of the
U.S. Department of Agriculture.