ChickRH6: a chicken whole-genome radiation hybrid panel.

As a first step towards the development of radiation hybrid maps, we have produced a radiation hybrid panel in the chicken by fusing female embryonic diploid fibroblasts irradiated at 6,000 rads with HPRT-deficient hamster Wg3hCl2 cells. Due to the low retention frequency of the chicken fragments, a high number of clones was produced from which the best ones were selected. Thus, 452 fusion clones were tested for retention frequencies with a panel of 46 markers.