'Plant Breeding: Sustaining the Future' Abstracts of the XVIth EUCARPIA Congress, Edinburgh, Scotland, 10-14 September 2001 DNA MICROSATELLITE LOCALIZATION TO COTTON BAC LIBRARY R.G. CANTRELL, E. LEI, R.A. WING New Mexico State University, Las Cruces, NM., USA

Cultivated cotton (Gossypium hirsutum L., 2n=4X=52) has a complex polyploid genome that presents a challenge for integrating genetic and physical maps. DNA microsatellites or simple sequence repeats (SSR) are increasing being used as portable PCR-based framework markers in genetic mapping and chromosome localization. SSR loci are being anchored to physical mapping resources using a large-insert BAC library derived from cv. Maxxa. BAC-PCR pools provide an efficient way for localizing an SSR locus to a BAC address. This effectively converts the marker to a Sequence Tagged Site (STS), facilitating their use as framework markers in ongoing genetic and physical mapping projects. Many SSRs have been anchored to BACs in this manner and their accuracy verified by DNA sequencing the SSR-PCR product from the individual BAC template.