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Title: CHARACTERIZATION OF GENE EXPRESSION PATTERNS IN THE BOVINE MAMMARY GLAND

Author
item Sonstegard, Tad
item Capuco, Anthony
item Wells, Kevin
item Ashwell, Melissa
item Van Tassell, Curtis - Curt

Submitted to: Meeting Abstract
Publication Type: Abstract Only
Publication Acceptance Date: 1/16/2001
Publication Date: 2/3/2001
Citation: Sonstegard, T.S., Capuco, A.V., Wells, K.D., Ashwell, M.S., Van Tassell, C.P. 2001. Characterization of gene expression patterns in the bovine mammary gland [abstract]. Genome biology and technology conference, Marco Island, FL.

Interpretive Summary:

Technical Abstract: Characterization of mammary gene expression will aid the discovery of economically important factors that influence udder health and production in dairy cattle. One of the most difficult management challenges facing the U.S. dairy industry is mastitis control, which annually costs producers an estimated two billion dollars. Genomics holds great promise for understanding the complexities of diseases like mastitis, as well as for improving basic knowledge of mammary gland biology, apoptosis, and cell proliferation. The best approach to genomic science in livestock relies on building resources with linkages to the human and mouse genomes. To aid construction of a comparative map between bovine and human genomes and develop a resource for gene discovery and expression profiling, EST sequence evaluation of a pooled-tissue, normalized library of the mammary gland was performed. The library was constructed using equimolar amounts of mRNA from mammary tissue of animals undergoing critical physiological events in mammary growth, development, and health. Over 15,000 ESTs were produced and deposited in GenBank. These mammary ESTs correspond to over 3,800 of the 16,740 known bovine tentative consensus (TC) sequences and 2,900 of the 30,544 singletons in the TIGR Cattle Gene Index. Two hundred and fifty-three of the bovine TCs contained only BARC ESTs. The majority of TC clusters matched by BARC ESTs (90%) contained only one, two, or three BARC ESTs. These results suggested normalization was successful for genes expressed at low and intermediate levels. The TCs representing major protein components of bovine milk (0.2%) matched with over 2,000 of the BARC ESTs, suggesting normalization of extremely abundant mRNAs was limited.