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NRSP-8 Renewed and Coordinator Applicants Sought The NRSP-8 renewal proposal has been recommended for approval by the NRSP Review

Committee without revisions (currently this has the designation NRSP_TEMP281). Note: you

can check at NIMSS (http://lgu.umd.edu/lgu_v2/pages/directory/contact.cfm) using the

“Contact an Expert/Participant” link under “Directory”. If you think you should be a

member, but do not have access or are not on the list, please contact your Experiment

Station to make sure the necessary form is submitted. Thanks to Tom Porter for

spearheading the rewrite process. The new project is expected to last from 10/01/2013-9/30/2018.

Lakshmi Matukumalli, National Program Leader for Animal Breeding, Genetics and

Genomics, is soliciting self-nominations for species and bioinformatics coordinators for the next

five year term. The nomination has to come from the individual himself/herself and should

include a statement of interest (up to two pages) describing her/his plans and vision for

community resources in alignment with the new NRSP-8 proposal. Please send your

nomination and statement to Lakshmi at lmatukumalli@nifa.usda.gov by July 26, 2013.

Please note. One of the current poultry co-coordinators will not be applying to continue. Hans

Cheng has persuaded Mary Delany to apply along with him to be co-coordinators for poultry

for the upcoming term. However, other applicants are welcomed, and you are encouraged to self-

nominate, if interested, as described above.

PAG XXII & NAGRP/NC1170 Meeting

PAG-XXII/NRSP8/NC1170 (www.intlpag.org) will be held January 11-15, 2014 once again at

the Town and Country Hotel in San Diego. Doug Rhoads and Carl Schmidt are organizing

the Poultry Workshop. Suggestions for guest speakers should be sent to Doug or Carl. Also,

you should have received an email from Doug (July 4, he even works holidays) about the travel

support availability for postdocs/grad students. Awardees will give 2 minute Workshop

presentations. Applicants should send a PDF with their abstract, resume and a letter of

justification from their mentor to Doug (drhoads@uark.edu) or Carl (schmidtc@udel.edu).

Milt Thomas is organizing the NRSP-8 Animal Genome Joint Symposium. Planned speakers

include Rachel Hawken, Cobb-Vantress; Toni Reverter, CSIRO; and Fernanda Foertter,

Nat’l Ctr for Computational Sciences, Oak Ridge Nat. Lab.

Congratulations to next years’ NRSP-8 Distinguished Lecturer, Joan Lunney, USDA-

ARS! This is a well-deserved recognition of her contributions; we look forward to her lecture.

The EU-US Animal Biotechnology Working Group is planning a meeting on Friday,

January 10, 2014, prior to PAG to discuss future prospects/initiatives for animal genomics. A

morning session, open to the public, will feature plenary talks by Elise Feingold, Bing Ren,

and Ewan Birney, along with updates for the various species. So plan to come a day early!!

POULTRY GENOME

NEWSLETTER

2013

Issue No. 3

July, 2013

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Save the Date! Avian Model Systems – The 8th International Meeting Mark your calendars for the Avian Model Systems Meeting to be held at Cold Spring

Harbor Lab, Cold Spring Harbor, NY on Tuesday March 4 – Saturday March 8, 2014.

(The workshop begins on Tuesday at 1pm and finishes Wednesday at 5pm. The full meeting will

start on Wednesday at 7.30pm and finishes Saturday at noon). This meeting provides a forum

for all avian biologists to meet and discuss how to best to advance avian systems. Additional

information will become available on the CSHL website (http://meetings.cshl.edu/), when they

post their 2014 line-up. Meeting chairs are Andrea Streit, David Clayton, and Rusty

Lansford with Rusty and Megan Davey organizing the Workshop.

Next summer: 10th Int’l Symposium on MD and Avian Herpesviruses Hold the date! The 10th International Symposium on Marek’s Disease and Avian

Herpesviruses will be held at the Kellogg Center in East Lansing, MI on July 20-23, 2014.

April 1, 2014 is the abstract deadline and May 14, 2014 is the deadline for reduced registration

fees. See http://cvm.msu.edu/marek .

WASHINGTON UPDATE

As reported last time, the President’s FY 2014 Budget Proposal proposed a major increase to the

USDA-NIFA AFRI grant program (to $383M total), as well as $155M to renovate the USDA-

ARS Southeast Poultry Research Lab in Athens, GA and move the Avian Disease and Oncology

Lab from East Lansing to Athens. However, the bill reported out of the House Appropriations

Committee reduces the proposed AFRI increase (to a total of $291M, 10.1% above the FY2012

pre-sequester level) and deletes the $155M in renovation funding. As also noted previously,

given the current political climate, it seems highly unlikely that the President, Senate and

House will agree on any new USDA budget for 2014, most likely resorting to the now typical

Continuing Resolution with little, if any, change in funding. Stay tuned.

Joan Lunney, 2014

NRSP-8 Distinguished

Lecturer at PAG-XXII

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Weigh in on poultry genomics resource needs The NRSP-8 poultry genome coordinators need your input on community resources that we can

support, at least in part. So far this year, we have plans to support optical mapping and

Moleculo long read sequencing to improve the genome sequence. As noted last time, Cobb

Vantress, Inc. recently committed funds that Wes Warren at the Washington U. Genome

Institute will use to help close some of the gaps in the sequence and Wes recently received

notice that a USDA-AFRI grant proposal to both enhance the chicken genome and provide

interactive corrections and updating of the sequence will be funded in the coming cycle. Thus,

we expect major improvements to occur in the next couple of years. We depend on your ideas, so

please email them to either dodgson@msu.edu or hcheng@msu.edu.

ON THE ROAD AGAIN. UPCOMING MEETINGS:

Poultry Science Association Annual Meeting, July 21-25, 2013, Town & Country Resort &

Convention Center, San Diego, CA. Information at http://www.poultryscience.org/psa13/

5th International Symposium on Animal Functional Genomics (ISAFG), Sept. 9-11, 2013, Casa

Grande Hotel Resort & Spa, Guaruja Island, Brazil. Information at

http://www.sciencesatellite.org.br/isafg2013/

8th European Symposium on Poultry Genetics, September 25 – 27, 2013, Centro Congressi Isola

di San Servolo, Venice, Italy. See http://www.epgs2013.com/welcome.php

Plant & Animal Genome Conference, PAG XXII, Jan. 11-15, 2014, Town & Country Resort &

Convention Center, San Diego, CA. Information available at http://www.intlpag.org/

Avian Model Systems – the 8th International Meeting, March 4-8, 2014, Cold Spring Harbor Lab,

Cold Spring Harbor, NY. Information to be posted at http://meeting.cshl.edu.

PAG ASIA, May 19-21, 2014, Grand Copthorne Waterfront Hotel, Singapore. Details at

www.intlpagasia.org

Poultry Science Association Annual Meeting, July 14-17, 2014, Omni Corpus Christi Hotel,

Corpus Christi, Texas.

International Society for Animal Genetics, July 27 – Aug. 1, 2014, Xi’an, China. See

http://isag2014.com for more info.

10th International Symposium on Marek’s Disease and Avian Herpesviruses, July 20-23, 2014,

Kellogg Center, East Lansing, MI. See http://cvm.msu.edu/marek

10th World Congress on Genetics Applied to Livestock Production, August 17-22, 2014,

Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada. See http://wcgalp.com/

Poultry Genome Newsletter Archive

Poultry Genome Newsletters are distributed electronically through Angenmap, the Animal

Genome Discussion Group (http://www.animalgenome.org/community/discuss). Previous

newsletters are archived as .pdf files at http://poultry.mph.msu.edu/newsltrs/newsltrs.htm.

PLEASE PROVIDE YOUR INPUT

The Poultry Coordinators are always glad to hear from NRSP-8 members and other readers

about ways that we can improve the coordination effort or provide resources that are needed and

with which we may be able to help. Also, let us know if you have items of general interest

to the poultry genetics community that we can include in this Newsletter. PICTURES

and GRAPHICS are especially welcome for our .pdf versions of the newsletter.

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Hans Cheng

USDA-ARS-ADOL, 3606 E. Mt. Hope Ave.

East Lansing, MI 48823 hcheng@msu.edu

Jerry Dodgson

Dept. of Micro. & Mol. Genetics

567 Wilson Road, Michigan State U.

East Lansing, MI 48824 dodgson@msu.edu

Supported by Research Funds to the National Research Service Program: NRSP-8. National

Animal Genome Research Program, Lakshmi Matukumalli, NAGRP Director, USDA-NIFA