Assignment of the giant panda MHC class II gene cluster to chromosome 9q by fluorescence in situ hybridization

This work was supported by a grant from the State Key Basic Research and Development Plan of P.R. China (G2000046906) and a special grant from the State Forestry Administration of P.R. China. We thank Professor Da-Yuan Chen and Ms. Zhao-Hui Kou for their help in culturing the fibroblast cells. The FISH experiments were performed at the Institute of Genetics and Developmental Biology, Chinese Academy of Science. We would also like to thank Professor Zhu-Kuan Chen and Dr. Wen-Li Zhang for their guidance and kind help in performing FISH.