Dear All,
Following on from the MMC microsatellite consortium which
ends in November, I have been asked by several people if I would be
interested in setting up a "low key" maize SNPs consortium (acronym
MSC). If such a consortium goes ahead it would be based on our
existing (UK Government funded) maize SNPs programme, which has to
date examined the occurrence of SNPs at over 50 loci in 10 US and
European inbreds (see
http://www.intl-pag.org/pag/7/abstracts/pag7302.html for our [very]
preliminary report).
Very briefly, the idea of the consortium would be that 25 existing
public markers/ESTs are allocated to each individual consortium
member. The member would then be responsible for determining the
sequence of these markers/ESTs in 8 pre-defined genotypes (200
sequences in total). The individual member would send the results to
me and I would collated them in a central spreadsheet. This
spreadsheet would then be distributed to all the members of the
consortium who had already provided their sequence data. Updates would
be provided at regular intervals. It would be up to the individual
members what they do with the data. The initial life of the consortium
would be 2 years.
So to put it simply; in return for sequencing a small number of loci,
you would be provided with all the sequencing data (and hence the SNPs
data) from all the other consortium members. Given that we hope to
attract up to 30 members this could be quite a lot of information.
There would of course be a few more rules to deal with publications,
and commercial use and there will have to be a small joining fee to
cover administration/quality control, but unless we get a minimum
number of say 10 labs interested in the consortium, these are
irrelevant.
To start the whole process going Long Ashton will put the first 25
converted loci in to the database.
If you are interested please let me have your details and once we have
the minimum number I will get back to you.
Best Regards
Dr Keith J. Edwards
Head of Crop Genetics
IACR Long Ashton Research Station
Department of Agricultural Science
University of Bristol
Long Ashton
Bristol BS41 9AF
Telephone : 01275 392181 FAX : 01275 394007
Direct line : 01275 549431
Email:Keith.Edwards at bbsrc.ac.uk
