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Rabbit, a domestic species exploited both in animal production and medical research has only recently begun to be included in gene mapping projects, in particular by the French National Institute of Agronomics. By 2002, less than 60 genes had been precisely localised on rabbit chromosomes, which led us to start a large-scale project on gene mapping in rabbit with the publication of 133 gene localisations in 2003 (Chantry-Darmon et al., 2003). Here, we report the localisation of 102 new genes resulting in good coverage of the rabbit genome and an eight-fold enrichment of the gene map. In addition, we have detected a new conserved segment between rabbit chromosome 4q15.3 and part of human chromosome 22 and thus improved the comparative map with the human genome. Copyright © 2005 S. Karger AG, Basel [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Rabbit (Oryctolagus cuniculus) , besides its interest for medical research and biotechnological applications, has a small agronomic production in southern European countries. However, it is still a “map-poor” species with about 80 genes mapped. Recently, useful tools for research on this species have been developed, such as heterologous human-rabbit chromosome painting data and a rabbit BAC library. In this study, our aim is to enrich the rabbit cytogenetic map using the FISH technique. Towards this, we have used cDNAs (rabbit and non rabbit) present in the public databases to determine intra-exon primers used to screen our three-genome equivalent BAC library, by standard PCR directly on DNA pools, and by hybridization of high-density filters. 133 BAC clones containing the genes of interest were isolated and FISH-mapped to the rabbit chromosomes. We present the localization of new genes on all rabbit chromosomes except OCU20 and OCUY and some preliminary data on the rabbit/human comparative map. In addition, this set of BAC clones quite regularly distributed on the rabbit genome will be useful to isolate microsatellites, in order to construct a first generation genetic map. Copyright © 2003 S. Karger AG, Basel [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]