Exploitation of a marker dense linkage map of potato for positional cloning of a wart disease resistance gene

A marker-saturated linkage map of potato was used to genetically map a locus involved in the resistance against wart disease Synchytrium endobioticum race 1. The locus mapped on the long arm of chromosome 4 and is named Sen1-4 in contrast to a Sen1 locus on chromosome 11. The AFLP markers from the Sen1-4 interval enabled the isolation of BAC clones from an 11 genome equivalent BAC library. This was achieved via fingerprinting of BAC pools with the AFLP primer pairs that resemble the genetic marker loci. With non-selective AFLP primers, fingerprints of individual BAC clones were generated to analyse the overlap between BAC clones using FPC. This resulted in a complete contig and a minimal tiling path of 14 BAC clones enclosing the Sen1-4 locus. The BAC contig has a genetic length of ~6 cM and a physical length of ~1 Mb. Our results demonstrate that map-based cloning of Sen1-4 can be pursued on the basis of a strategy of marker saturation alone. Genetic resolution achieved by screening large numbers of offspring for recombination events may not be required. Together with the construction of the BAC contig, a physical map with the position of the markers is accomplished in one step. This provides proof of concept for the utility of the marker saturation that is offered by the ultra dense AFLP map of potato for gene cloning.