Hi all

Gavin points out the honey bee genome availability at...
http://www.hgsc.bcm.tmc.edu/projects/honeybee/

And Gavin further says...
> Knowing the code doesn't mean that you understand the organism of course.
> However, it gives scientists the tools to achieve a lot in the future -
and
> the honeybee race comparisons you are interested in will be one of these
> applications.


However it is not the overall sequence that will be the most help to
breeders... We need to identify the differences between individual alleles
that can occur at specific points in the Mitochondrial DNA, so that the
racial make up can be traced and worked backwards to the point of origin.
The alleles also need to be correlated to the behavioural characteristics.

It is a library of these differences that I am trying to construct, luckily
we are dealing with sequences (microsatelites) that are relatively short
(around 300 base pairs) rather than whole genes.

At least by working this way we are dealing with manageable chunks.

I hope that I do not give the impression that it is a 'walk in the park',
but it is not insurmountable... We are a long way from assembling strings of
known alleles in order to synthesise a gene, but if we can cross bees and
establish the actual alleles present that amounts to much the same thing,
but increases the amount of assessment required due to large numbers of
'possible' allele arrangements.


Best Regards & 73s, Dave Cushman... G8MZY
Beekeeping & Bee Breeding Website
Email: [log in to unmask] or  [log in to unmask]
http://website.lineone.net/~dave.cushman & http://www.dave-cushman.net

::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::
-- Visit www.honeybeeworld.com/BEE-L for rules, FAQ and  other info ---
::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::