The Chicken Gene Map.

Abstract

Most efforts to map the genomes of birds have concentrated almost exclusively on the domesticated chicken (Gallus gallus) and on very few other species. Two reasons for this bias are the importance of chicken as a major source of meat and egg products and as a model of vertebrate development. The first genetic linkage map of the chicken was published in 1936 by Hutt (1936) and represented the first map reported for any domestic farm animal species. Updates of this classical map have been published periodically, with the most recent being that of Bitgood and Somes (1993). The small size of the chicken genome (1.2 billion base-pairs; Bloom and others 1993) and the ability to isolate DNA from nucleated red blood cells (note: red blood cells in mammals lack nuclei) make it well suited for gene mapping. Despite these advantages, 6 decades of genetic linkage mapping have produced a limited map. International collaborative efforts to produce a molecular map of the chicken genome have been established only in the last 5 yr (Burt and others 1995,1997).