Summary of the 5^th International Equine Gene Mapping Workshop conducted by the Dorothy Russell Havemeyer Foundation at Kruger National Park, South Africa, August 11-14, 2003.

First, we saw lots of wildlife every day between 6AM and 9AM!

This workshop was attended by 40 participants from New Zealand, Australia, Japan, Korea, California, Texas, Kentucky, New York, Ireland, United Kingdom, France, Norway, Sweden, Italy, Germany, Poland, Czech Republic and, of course, South Africa. The most striking aspect of the workshop was the venue. The Kruger National Park is the size of the state of New Jersey (obviously an American point of reference). Each morning, before sessions started at 10AM, attendees could ride through the park and see elephants, giraffes, rhinos, zebras, gnus, antelope, hyenas, buffalo, maybe lions and leopards but also many diverse and colorful birds. It was amazing.

Also amazing was the wonderful hospitality provided by our hosts. Enette van Dyk has participated in the workshop since the beginning and invited us to South Africa. A special thanks is due to Alan Guthrie. The organization of the meeting was arranged by Alan Guthrie, Director of the Equine Research Center at Onderstepoort, with assistance from his graduate student, Cindy Harper, and assistants, Esther Bell, Anette Nel and Heriette Lategan. As well as presenting the results of their excellent research studies, our hosts left no detail unattended. We all left impressed and grateful. Thanks!

Despite the brilliant setting and wonderful distractions, participants could still focus on the purpose of the conference:

Day 1: A tour of the park from 6-9AM followed by a session at 10AM on Mapping:

Domenico Bernoco summarized his work compiling the data from the published linkage maps plus the new linkage data provided to the workshop. The consensus map includes 559 markers covering all autosomes and the X chromosome. This work demonstrated that the linkage data could be combined. He also discussed use of a program called Carthagene that might be useful to combine data from linkage and RH maps in the future.

Cecilia Penedo reported on addition of TKY markers to the linkage map and work to also add markers to the RH map. The gene for Dun color was mapped to the notorious gap on the linkage map of ECA8.

Matthew Binns and June Swinburne reported on progress to add markers to the Newmarket Full-sibling reference family. They have over 730 markers mapped and plan to publish as soon as they close some gaps in the linkage map. They anticipate limited application of this resource in the future although they noted that Jim Mickelson of the University of Minnesota was developing additional microsatellite markers and was independently adding them to this map. They invited others with interests in adding large numbers of markers by linkage mapping to contact them about continuing to use this resource.

Terje Raudsepp and Bhanu Chowdhary described the recently published RH map framework and their activities to 1.) add more markers to the map and 2.) make the RH map available for others to use. Their strategy has been to use comparative genomics, EST data and BAC clones to place a BAC at 10 Mb intervals on chromosomes, and in some cases, at 1 Mb intervals. Current focus is on ECA17, ECA22 and ECAX. They have prepared aliquots of the panel for other scientists to use in mapping and are also developing a website for rapid reporting and analysis of the data.

Gérard Guérin presented similar work using BAC markers and comparative mapping data describing work to place BACs at 10 Mb intervals throughout the horse genome.

Tosso Leeb described plans and work to create a scaffold of BAC clones and markers for the horse genome using end sequencing of randomly selected BACs. He raised the issue of preparing resources for ultimate whole genome sequencing for the horse.

Days 2 & 3: A tour of the park from 6-9AM followed by a sessions on the research of the participants (a pdf file with the program and abstracts will follow).