Assignment of bovine submaxillary mucin (BSM1) gene homologues to bubaline, caprine, and ovine chromosomes by comparative mapping.

BSM1 gene encodes for bovine submaxillary mucin, which is a member of a group of macromolecular glycoproteins present in mucous secretions of mammalian respiratory, gastrointestinal, and urogenital tracts (Roussel et al., 1988). The central domain of the BSM1 gene consists of approximately 55 tandem repeats of 329 amino acids and shows high peptide sequence similarity with porcine and ovine submaxillary mucins (Jiang et al., 2000; Eckhardt et al., 1997). The BSM1 gene was previously mapped to bovine chromosome 5q2.2→q2.3 by Jiang et al. (2000). We used the PCR-generated BSM1 probe for comparative FISH mapping. The assigned positions of BSM1 homologues in river buffalo (4q2.2→q2.3), sheep (3q2.2→q2.3), and goat (5q2.2→q2.3) genomes confirm the high linkage conservation in these species.