Construction of a bovine Chromosome 19 linkage map with an interspecies hybrid backcross

Interspecific hybrid backcross animals from a Bos taurus x Bos gaurus F-1 female were used to construct a linkage map of bovine Chromosome (Chr) 19. This map includes eight previously unmapped type I anchor loci, CHRNB1, CRYB1, GH1, MYL4, NF1, P4HB, THRA1, TP53, and five microsatellite markers, HEL10, BP20, MAP2C, ETH3, BMC1013, from existing linkage maps. The linkage relationship was determined to be centromere-HEL10-18.8cM-NF1-4.0cM-CRYB1-11.2cM-(BP20, CHRNB1, TP53)-4.0cM-(MAP2C, GH1, MYL4, THRA1)-14.4cM-P4HB-11.2cM-ETH3-4.0cM-BMC1013. It was previously revealed that bovine Chr 19 contains the largest known conserved autosomal synteny among human, bovine, and mouse. This study has shown that gene orders within this segment are not conserved among the three species. We propose structural changes in an ancestral mammalian chromosome to account for these differences. This is the first interspecific hybrid backcross used in bovine linkage studies, and it has proven to be an effective tool for incorporating bovine type I loci into the linkage map even with the small sample size presently available. This resource will facilitate the generation of comparative linkage maps that address gene order and effectively predict the locations of unmapped loci across species.