Activities:

The International Barley Sequencing Consortium (IBSC), including the US, Germany, UK, Finland, Australia, and Japan (http://barleygenome.org/) was formalized at the 18th annual International Triticeae Mapping Initiative (ITMI) workshop (Victor Harbor, Australia; August 27 – 31, 2006).  The priority near-term need of community is the identification of the remainder of ~50,000 genes, including the 5’ and 3’ regulatory regions (by end of 2008), and the longer-term goal an ordered physical map anchored to the genetic map (by end of 2010) to accelerate crop improvement.

Germany will provide a whole-genome physical map integrated with the current NSF-funded map (PI Close, Award #0321756).  Australia will provide new BAC libraries for physical mapping in addition to targeted sequencing efforts on 7H (to be linked with wheat group 7).  An SCRI-led effort will provide BAC-end sequences anchored to the genetic map.  Japan will provide additional gene discovery and targeted BAC sequencing from Haruna Nijo, a second haplotype.  Currently, there is > 60 Gb of contributed Barley1 GeneChip expression data in PLEXdb.  Large groups of tightly co-regulated genes are at our fingertips, thus, the near-term need is not only to identify the rest of the genes, but also their regulatory regions to access gene networks for a number of key traits.

Among recent complementary initiatives of the consortium are:

• A new integrated whole genome barley physical map.  This effort is being led by IPK in Gatersleben, Germany.  A new Morex BAC library is under construction at the Australian Centre for Plant Functional Genomics (ACPFG, Adelaide) with the goal being a minimum average insert size of 150kb, using three cloning enzymes to generate a 10 - 12x library (4x, 4x, 4x).  IPK will HICF fingerprint the new library and also fingerprint a minimum tiling path from the Close et al. NSF project (Award #0321756) for integration of the two projects. 

• Bidirectional BAC-end sequences from 350,000 clones of the Morex physical map have been submitted for funding in the EU by the Scottish Crop research Institute (SCRI), the University of Udine, and IPK. BAC-end sequencing will generate about 600Mbp DNA sequence or 10% of the genome. - Updated Feb. 22, 2007.

• 4,500 single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) on three Illumina 1,526 SNP Oligo pool assays (OPAs) for high throughput mapping and genotyping; the first from the Close, Waugh, and Graner NSF, SCRI, & IPK projects respectively, and two additional OPAs from the USDA-CSREES Barley CAP project (PI Muehlbauer, Award #2005-05128) and UK DEFRA LINK project (PI Waugh, Award# SA LINK BB/D522003/1).  These will quickly leverage the genomic efforts into plant breeding.

• 5,000 full length (FL) barley cDNAs from cv. Haruna Nijo (K. Sato, Okayama University, Japan, nearly complete).  Another 30,000 FL cDNAs from the same cDNA pool will be produced at Tsukuba in the next three years. In addition, 500 BAC clones on barley chromosome 3 (syntenic with rice chromosome 1) that target important agronomic traits has been initiated for cv. Haruna Nijo by K. Sato. This also will link with French, UK, US, and Australian efforts to physically map and sequence chromosomes 3A, 3B, and 3D from wheat.

• Large-scale sequencing of 7H (to be linked with wheat group 7) by the ACPFG in Australia.