The bovine QTL viewer: a web accessible database of bovine Quantitative Trait Loci

Background: Many important agricultural traits such as weight gain, milk fat content and intramuscular fat (marbling) in cattle are quantitative traits. Most of the information on these traits has not previously been integrated into a genomic context. Without such integration application of these data to agricultural enterprises will remain slow and inefficient. Our goal was to populate a genomic database with data mined from the bovine quantitative trait literature and to make these data available in a genomic context to researchers via a user friendly query interface. Description: The QTL (Quantitative Trait Locus) data and related information for bovine QTL are gathered from published work and from existing databases. An integrated database schema was designed and the database (MySQL) populated with the gathered data. The bovine QTL Viewer was developed for the integration of QTL data available for cattle. The tool consists of an integrated database of bovine QTL and the QTL viewer to display QTL and their chromosomal position. Conclusion: We present a web accessible, integrated database of bovine (dairy and beef cattle) QTL for use by animal geneticists. The viewer and database are of general applicability to any livestock species for which there are public QTL data. The viewer can be accessed at http:// bovineqtl.tamu.edu.