A BAC-based physical map of the Nile tilapia genome

Takayuki Katagiri,Justin E Stern,Karen L Carleton,Aimee E Howe,Celeste Kidd,Thomas D Kocher,Cassandra Wishon,Elizabeth Tomasino,Jesse T Davis

doi:10.1186/1471-2164-6-89

Abstract

BackgroundCichlid fishes, particularly tilapias, are an important source of animal protein in tropical countries around the world. To support selective breeding of these species we are constructing genetic and physical maps of the tilapia genome. Physical maps linking collections of BAC clones are a critical resource for both positional cloning and assembly of whole genome sequences.ResultsWe constructed a genome-wide physical map of the tilapia genome by restriction fingerprinting 35,245 bacterial artificial chromosome (BAC) clones using high-resolution capillary polyacrylamide gel electrophoresis. The map consists of 3,621 contigs and is estimated to span 1.752 Gb in physical length. An independent analysis of the marker content of four contigs demonstrates the reliability of the assembly.ConclusionThis physical map is a powerful tool for accelerating genomic studies in cichlid fishes, including comparative mapping among fish species, long-range assembly of genomic shotgun sequences, and the positional cloning of genes underlying important phenotypic traits. The tilapia BAC fingerprint database is freely available at .

Highlights

IntroductionTilapias, are an important source of animal protein in tropical countries around the world
Cichlid fishes, tilapias, are an important source of animal protein in tropical countries around the world
We estimated the sizing accuracy of the capillary sequencer by analyzing the size of the vector band in 200 clones

Summary

Introduction

Tilapias, are an important source of animal protein in tropical countries around the world. To support selective breeding of these species we are constructing genetic and physical maps of the tilapia genome. Physical maps linking collections of BAC clones are a critical resource for both positional cloning and assembly of whole genome sequences. More than 3,000 species of cichlid fishes are distributed from Central and South America, through Africa and Madagascar, to southern India [2]. Tilapias (Oreochromis spp.) are cichlid fishes which have become one of the most important species in global aquaculture. Native to Africa, several species of tilapia have been introduced to tropical areas of Asia and the Americas to increase supplies of animal protein. World aquaculture (page number not for citation purposes)

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Results

Conclusion