Construction and characterization of a high coverage cashmere goat BAC library containing cashmere-associated genes

Bacterial Artificial Chromosome (BAC) libraries have proven to be effective tools for genomic studies. Here, we report the construction of an Inner-Mongolian Cashmere goat BAC library. The library contains 276,480 BAC colonies, is organized into two grades, and has a 4-dimension structure. The average insert size of the library is 128 kb, based on the analysis of 566 randomly selected clones. Assuming a genome size of 3 × 109 bases, the genome coverage of the library is approximately 11.8-fold. The library was screened by PCR using 20 microsatellite markers and six goat genes associated with the hair follicle and skin development. Positive BACs for all the microsatellite markers were identified and the number of positive clones ranged from 3 to 19, with an average of 11.1. The number of positive BACs for genes ranged from 3 to 15 with an average of 9.2.