Compass of 47,787 cattle ESTs

Comparative Mapping by Annotation and Sequence Similarity (COMPASS) has bee n demonstrated to be an effective approach for predicting the chromosome lo cation of expressed sequence tags (ESTs) and other sequence-based markers o n the basis of comparative mapping information. Herein, we describe the dev elopment and use of a computer program to execute the COMPASS strategy en m asse. The program was used to identify orthologs and predict map locations of 47,787 cattle ESTs. Among these 47,787 ESTs, 30,097 had significant matc hes with sequences in the human UniGene database and 21,311 were annotated with human GB4 radiation hybrid mapping data. These sequences are contained within 9,956 and 6,295 individual human UniGene clusters, respectively. Th e putative human orthologs and predicted cattle chromosome locations of the 21,311 cattle ESTs with GB4 mapping data are provided in this report as a resource for the research community.