Development and testing of a high-density cDNA microarray resource for cattle

1 Department of Animal Science 2 Center for Animal Functional Genomics 3 Genomics Technology Support Facility, Michigan State University, East Lansing, Michigan 48824 4 Department of Animal Science, Cornell University, Ithaca, New York 14853 5 Department of Animal Sciences, University of Arizona, Tucson, Arizona 85721 6 Department of Animal Science, University of California, Davis, California 95616 7 Department of Animal Sciences, University of Missouri, Columbia, Missouri 65211 8 Department of Animal and Veterinary Science, University of Idaho, Moscow, Idaho 83844 9 United States Department of Agriculture, Agricultural Research Service, United States Meat Animal Research Center, Clay Center, Nebraska 68933 10 United States Department of Agriculture, Agricultural Research Service, Beltsville Agricultural Research Center, Beltsville, Maryland 20705 A cDNA microarray resource has been developed with the goal of providing integrated functional genomics resources for cattle. The National Bovine Functional Genomics Consortium’s (NBFGC) expressed sequence tag (EST) collection was established in 2001 to develop resources for functional genomics research. The NBFGC EST collection and microarray contains 18,263 unique transcripts, derived from many different tissue types and various physiologically important states within these tissues. The NBFGC microarray has been tested for false-positive rates using self-self hybridizations and was shown to yield robust results in test microarray experiments. A web-accessible database has been established to provide pertinent data related to NBFGC clones, including sequence data, BLAST results, and ontology information. The NBFGC microarray represents the largest cDNA microarray for a livestock species prepared to date and should prove to be a valuable tool in studying genome-wide gene expression in cattle. expressed sequence tag; bovine