EST databases have been enormously valuable to research employing other commonly used model organisms (e.g., mouse, zebrafish). Such a resource allows the identification of molecular probes for developmental studies, provides clones for DNA microchip construction, can reveal candidate genes for mutant phenotypes, and facilitates studies of gene duplication and genome structure. Furthermore, ESTs can be the raw material from which strain-specific polymorphisms can be identified and a genetic linkage map constructed. The utility of such a resource can be enhanced if ESTs are isolated from cell types and tissues that are actively being used by other researchers so as to bias the collection of sequences towards genes of special interest. Two major areas of biomedical research for which salamanders are currently being employed are limb regeneration and retinal physiology. Thus, we are sequencing 20,000 randomly chosen clones from salamander limb and retina cDNA libraries, for the purpose of generating ~4000 non-redundant ESTs.

       A genetic linkage map is an essential resource for any model organism. Such maps allow gene orthologies to be rigorously established by comparing conserved genetic linkage relationships (syntenies) between mapped species. Framework genetic linkage maps also facilitate the mapping of new and previously isolated mutants, and can greatly speed efforts towards cloning such mutants (e.g., by candidate gene approaches). Finally, comparisons of genetic linkage maps across species provides information that is essential to understanding the pattern and process of genome evolution, and the genome organization of humans and model organisms. For salamander, our previous workmander, our previous work already has resulted in the production of a genetic linkage map comprising 346 markers (Voss et. al., In Press). Here our goal is to map ~2000 ESTs.