A Cytogenetic Snapshot of the Cotton Genome -- 2.5 Billion Base Pairs of DNA

The ongoing whole-genome sequencing project on upland cotton G. hirsutum is using BAC libraries constructed with DNA from this tetraploid AD-genome species. BACs selected from the sequencing libraries were physically localized to pachytene chromosomes by using fluorescense in situ hybridization techniques, thus cytogenetic maps have been constructed. The integration of cyto-genomic, physical maps and linkage maps offers a unique perspective, because it combines multiple genetic interests, such as gene and marker locations, recombination rates, genomic organization and structure, large-scale comparisons between subgenomes, et cetera.