Good news!!!!! As an outcome of the joint NIH-USDA workshop held in 2007, a joint funding opportunity was developed by NIH and NIFA to potentially sponsor research using farm animals as dual purpose models in agriculture and biomedicine. The potential research areas for funding were identified during the workshop and are listed in the attached document. Please be aware and acknowledge the considerable and persistent efforts of Lou DePaolo, Mark Mirando and LeAnn Blomberg in crafting the language and
pushing through the "red tape" necessary for the joint funding effort by NIH and NIFA to use farm animals as dual purpose models for biomedical and agricultural research. Also acknowledge the officials at NIH and NIFA that supported this unique effort.

The US Pork Center of Excellence will host a workshop on the newly released National Swine Nutrition Guide in conjunction with the JAM.

The paper, entitled “The IGF2 intron3-g.3072G>A polymorphism is not the only SSC2p mutation affecting meat production and carcass traits in pigs: evidences from the effects of cathepsin D (CTSD) gene polymorphism” can be found in full at jas.fass.org:J Anim Sci 2010 88: 2904-2912.

The paper is entitled “Development and evaluation of feeding-period average dry matter intake prediction equations from a commercial feedlot database,” and can be found in full at jas.fass.org: J Anim Sci 2010 88: 3009-3017.

The report by Bierman et al. is entitled “Fine-mapping quantitative trait loci for twinning rate on BTA14 in North American Holsteins.” It was first published online by the Journal of Animals Science in March, 2010. Read it in full at jas.fass.org: J. Anim Sci. 2010 88: 2556-2564.