The Bovine QTL Viewer

The Bovine QTL Viewer: A Tool for Mapping Phenotype to Genotype

David L Adelson1
1 Centre for Bioinformatics, School of Molecular and Biomedical Science and School of Agriculture, Food and Wine, The University of Adelaide, Adelaide, South Australia, Australia, 5005

We have previously developed a bovine quantitative trait locus (QTL) viewer, which includes a web accessible database of bovine QTL and linked it to the bovine genome assembly (BGA) v3.  This allowed for the creation of a link joining the bovine QTL viewer database to the genome browser of the bovine genome database. The result was a robust map that allowed livestock genome researchers to readily visualize sequence features, QTL and SNP data synergistically.  Since QTL for traits measured in both beef and dairy cattle have been included in the database, it is possible to determine if QTL found to be significant in one context are also significant in another, ie milk fat and back fat or visceral fat.  The web interface presents QTL, with links to the genome assembly and the composite map assembly, in a mode appropriate for both novice and expert users.  In this fashion, cattle become another model organism for research on human health.  This effort is part of the Bovine Genome Database Consortium (http://www.bovinegenome.org).