The National Animal Genome Program recently received funding for five more years of research, and Iowa State animal scientist Max Rothschild will continue to lead the program.

Rothschild serves as national coordinator for swine gene-mapping, a part of the genome program, which began in 1993.

Rothschild said the effort to map the genes of livestock is well underway across the country.

“There is a limited amount of money out there for doing gene-mapping in all of the livestock species,” he said.

Rothschild said by coordinating the mapping efforts, redundancy in research can be kept to a minimum.

“The idea will be that the gene map will lead to the identification of genes that are associated with traits of economic importance,” he said.

Identifying genes that control growth, health and reproduction can be propagated throughout the animal population by selective breeding, Rothschild said.

“We have very reasonable prices for food in this country,” he said. Rothschild said this is due, in large part, to the efficiency with which we raise livestock. He said this type of research improves efficiency and may reduce some of the necessary medical treatment of livestock.

“If we find genes that are associated with disease resistance, we can presumably use less antibiotics,” he said.

Rothschild said mapping the genes of animals is no less complicated than mapping human genes. The Human Genome Project aims to map all of the human genes, while the animal gene-mapping project focuses primarily on economic traits.

Rothschild said when the Human Genome Project makes an advance, the animal gene-mapping effort can sometimes apply that knowledge to its efforts.

ISU also was named as the primary site for national genetic databases on swine and poultry. Rothschild and his colleagues maintain these databases, summarize gene-mapping information and make resources available to other researchers.

ISU maintains a Web site, http://www.iastate.edu/~pigmap/, as part of this project that provides educational resources on gene-mapping.