BAC Library: Diversity of Teleost Fishes

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0208343KocherTeleost fishes are dominant components of aquatic ecosystems around the world, and are of tremendous commercial importance as a major source of animal protein. Teleosts have undergone a spectacular adaptive radiation over the last 200MY. The 25,000 species of teleost represent more than half of all living vertebrate taxa. Fishes are important model systems across the spectrum of biological research, from ecology, evolution and development to biomedicine. The genomic tools developed to sequence the human genome are now finding applications across many taxa. The genomes of three fish species (Danio, Fugu and Tetraodon) are being completely sequenced. Genetic maps have been constructed for a dozen other species, and physical maps are under construction for a few of these. BAC libraries for additional species will further research aimed at discovering the phylogenetic relationships among species, the genetic basis for adaptive differences among taxa, and the patterns and processes that regulate genome evolution. This project aims to further stimulate comparative genomic studies of fishes by constructing and distributing large-insert genomic DNA (BAC) libraries for two species representing major teleost lineages. They are the blind cavefish (Astyanax mexicanus), and the Lake Malawi zebra (Metriaclima zebra). These BAC libraries will permanently archived and distributed through the UNH Hubbard Center for Genome Studies, a new genome center focused on comparative and environmental genomics. Each library will be distributed as clones in 384-well plates and gridded filters suitable for hybridization screening. Extensive quality control measures will ensure that each derived product (replica plate or filter) can be traced back to the original clone. The Hubbard Center is committed to the development of comparative genomic resources for fishes. This proposal is the first step in a program to generate genomic and cDNA libraries, genetic and physical maps, and comparative mapping databases for fishes. The libraries proposed here will serve as a foundation for future research in phylogenetics, genome evolution, development, evolution, environmental biology and aquaculture.__