The porcine genome initiative: Implications for digestive physiology

Completion of the pig genome sequencing will celebrate the Chinese Year of the Pig in 2007. The International Swine Genome Sequencing Consortium has established an integrated approach to create genome sequences, chromosomal contigs, whole-genome libraries, full-length cDNA libraries and to generate single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs). The project is being conducted in collaboration with The Wellcome Trust Sange Institute. Project information as well as monitoring progress of the project can be viewed at http://www.sanger.ac.uk/Projects/S_scrofa/. During the next year, numerous physical maps and functional genomics analyses will be published. These advances will have significant implications for studying digestive physiology. Examples illustrating as to how effective genomic approaches for addressing critical questions in digestive physiology are presented. This includes approaches showing how genomics can be used to monitor the process of GI colonization and the effects of various nutrients are explored. The development of comparative genome maps also permits the incorporation of experimental studies in other species (mice and humans) to identify new hypotheses for testing in the pig. This comparative genomics approach further supports the use of the pig in biomedical research studies for human clinical studies. As this new genomic information becomes available, the necessity to create interactive databases, that provide portals for using genomic information to create gene based hypotheses will become rate limiting. Thus, the digestive physiology community contributions towards building web-based interfaces are essential.