| Progress in genome exploration in livestock species has steadily increased over the last fifteen years to produce a foundation of genetic information that will contribute significantly to livestock genomics in years to come. Livestock geneticists, although unable to tap the financial resources available to those involved in the Human Project and Mouse Genome Projects, have nonetheless been able to generate genetic information on domestic farm animals using some of the same technologies and the vast amounts of DNA sequence information provided by those projects. Gene mapping in cattle has progressed in recent history from constructing maps based on a few isozymes to using FISH, linkage, YACs, and BACs to order loci and assign coding sequences to specific regions on chromosomes. Current gene maps for cattle can provide useful information for quantitative trait loci searching, marker assisted selection, and identification of evolutionarily conserved genes from human or mouse for comparative mapping studies of chromosomal rearrangements and conserved syntenies.; Radiation Hybrid mapping has been an extremely powerful tool for constructing ordered maps of DNA sequences in the human genome, and is now becoming an equally powerful tool for mapping the bovine genome. As a universal translator between cattle linkage maps, cattle cytogenetic maps, and human transcription maps, bovine radiation hybrid mapping data will be valuable in order to exploit all of the information these other resources can provide. This dissertation describes the development and initial characterization of 5000 rad and 12,000 rad bovine whole genome-radiation hybrid cell panels. These panels were used to construct a radiation hybrid map of BTA1, including a framework map ordered with 1000:1 odds, and a comprehensive map including all of the markers genotyped. Evolutionarily conserved genes were typed on human and bovine RH panels in order to produce parallel radiation hybrid maps. These maps revealed segments homologous to HSA21 flanking segments homologous to HSA3 on BTA1. Microsatellites ordered on the RH map showed variation in the cR{dollar}sb{lcub}5000{rcub}{dollar}/cM distance ratio when compared with linkage data. The 12,000 rad panel was further characterized by typing centromeric markers and comparing the data with the 5000 rad data. |
