Brief report Characterization of hamster-bovine somatic cell hybrids by in situ hybridization and chromosome banding

1992) The bovine gene map is relatively void of markers compared to the human, mouse and rat gene maps; this is mainly due to the difficulty in identifying the bovine chromosomes (FRIES et al. 1989). The lo- calizations of loci for productive characters and disease resistance or susceptibility are of major interest for their potential manipulation in breed- ing programs. Cattle gene mapping can be performed by inter- specific hamster-bovine cell hybrids. Since the bovine chromosomes are selectively lost, it is poss- ible to establish an association between specific markers and the chromosomes retained