The goals and status of the bovine gene map

The bovine genome map has developed rapidly in recent years. The synteny and chromosomal maps are sufficiently developed to identify chromosomal conservation with other mammals, which is especially useful for the extrapolation of data to cattle from the better developed maps of mouse and human. The rapid development of microsatellite and other hypervariable markers in several laboratories around the world and the availability of a common set of reference families for linkage analysis will produce a 20-cM map in 2 yr. Immediate needs for development are 1) markers to anchor physical maps to linkage maps, 2) resource families segregating economic trait loci, and 3) chromosome-specific libraries to develop densely saturated linkage maps over genomic regions shown to contain economic trait loci.