Comparative genome analysis between the Atlantic salmon sex chromosome and the genomes of other teleosts

In Atlantic salmon, Linkage Group (LG) 1 contains the sex-determining locus, and from previous studies it was found that LG 1 corresponds to chromosome 2. I have completed a screen of the Atlantic salmon bacterial artificial chromosome (BAC) libraries for all known microsatellite markers on LG 1, and was able to integrate much of the physical and linkage maps in this genomic region. I have also constructed BAC minimum tiling pathways in many regions of chromosome 2, with the sequences of some of these regions being obtained. All the BAC-end sequences from the contigs assigned to Atlantic salmon LG 1 were subjected to BLASTx searches with the genomes of medaka, stickleback, zebrafish and Tetraodon. The orthologous genes found were used to identify the regions of these fish genomes that are syntenic to Atlantic salmon LG 1. Three sex-determining gene candidates were also identified: ZFYVE27, Zmat4 and TSG118.