Genetics. Published Articles Ahead of Print: March 1, 2006, Copyright © 2006
doi:10.1534/genetics.105.053256


A more recent version of this article appeared on May 1, 2006.


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A genetic and cytogenetic map for the duck (Anas platyrhynchos)

1 China Agricultural University
2 Roslin Institute
3 Gold Star Duck Production Ltd

* To whom correspondence should be addressed. E-mail: ninglbau{at}public3.bta.net.cn.

Submitted on November 8, 2005
Revised on February 11, 2006
Accepted on 24 February 2006


Abstract

ABSTRACT A genetic linkage map for the duck (Anas platyrhynchos) was developed within a cross between two extreme Peking duck lines by linkage analysis of 155 polymorphic microsatellite markers, including 84 novel markers reported in this study. A total of 115 microsatellite markers were placed into 19 linkage groups. The sex-averaged map spans 1353.3 cM, with an average interval distance of 15.04 cM. The male map covers 1415 cM, whereas the female map only covers 1387.6 cM. All of the flanking sequences of the 155 polymorphic loci, 44 monomorphic loci and a further 41 reported microsatellite loci for duck, were blasted against chicken genomic sequence, and 49 were found their corresponding orthologs. In order to integrate the genetic and cytogenetic map of the duck genome, 28 BAC clones were screened from a chicken BAC library using the specific PCR primers and localized to duck chromosomes by FISH, respectively. Twenty-four out of 28 were detected definitely on duck chromosomes. Thus, 11 out of 19 linkage groups were localized to 10 duck chromosomes. This genetic and cytogenetic map will be helpful to the mapping of QTLs in duck, in breeding applications and for conducting genomic comparisons between chicken and duck.

Key Words: Anas platyrhynchos, Heterologous hybridization, Microsatellite DNA, Orthologs, genetic physical map