So You Want To Work With Giants: the BAC Vector

Kevin She | Pages 69-74 | BioTeach Online Journal | Vol. 1 | Fall 2003

Bacterial Artificial Chromosome (BAC) libraries have been prominently used for the construction of physical genetic maps of many model species including Mus musculus, Arabidopsis thaliana, and of course, Homo sapiens. Also being studied are maps of economically important species such as Zea mais (corn), Oryza sativa (rice) as well as dangerous pathogens including herpes simplex virus and Epstein-Barr virus. Although BACs were created primarily to facilitate complex genome analyses and has been an extremely valuable tool for this purpose, there is a wide range of other uses. Application of BACs as tools span basic science, economically rewarding industrial research, and fields as prosaic as animal husbandry. Related to genomic analyses, the ease with which phylogenetic lineage determination between species has been vastly aided by easily manipulated and easily sequenced BAC libraries.