Genetics: Early Online, published on December 13, 2017 as 10.1534/genetics.117.300344 Comparative oligo-FISH mapping: an efficient and powerful methodology to reveal karyotypic and chromosomal evolution Guilherme T. Braz1,2*, Li He1,3*, Hainan Zhao1*, Tao Zhang1,4*, Kassandra Semrau5, Jean-Marie Rouillard5,6, Giovana A. Torres2, and Jiming Jiang1,7** 1 Department of Horticulture, University of Wisconsin-Madison, Madison, WI 53706 2 Departmento de Biologia, Universidade Federal de Lavras, Lavras MG 37200, Brazil 3 Horticulture Institute, Sichuan Academy of Agricultural Sciences, Chengdu, Sichuan 610066, China 4 Key Laboratory of Crop Genetics and Physiology of Jiangsu Province/Key Laboratory of Plant Functional Genomics of Ministry of Education, Yangzhou University, Yangzhou 225009, China 5 Arbor Biosciences, Ann Arbor, MI 48103 6 Department of Chemical Engineering, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor MI 48109 7 Departments of Plant Biology and Horticulture, Michigan State University, East Lansing MI 48824 _____________________________________________________________________ *These authors contributed equally to this work. **Corresponding author: Departments of Plant Biology, Michigan State University, East Lansing MI 48824. Email:
[email protected] - 1 - Copyright 2017. ABSTRACT Developing the karyotype of a eukaryotic species relies on identification of individual chromosomes, which has been a major challenge for most non-model plant and animal species. We developed a novel chromosome identification system by selecting and labeling oligonucleotides (oligos) located in specific regions on every chromosome. We selected a set of 54,672 oligos (45 nt) based on single copy DNA sequences in the potato genome. These oligos generated 26 distinct FISH signals that can be used as a ‘barcode’ or a ‘banding pattern’ to uniquely label each of the 12 chromosomes from both diploid and polyploid (4x and 6x) potato species.