Dear Cotton Community Members,

Please accept our apology for the email you received yesterday containing unsupported statements about a fellow member of CottonGen and ICGI. To rectify this situation we include below a clarification offered to us by Dr. Paterson. In the future, any communication requests from members to the CottonGen/ICGI mailing lists will be sent to the steering committees for approval before posting.

Sincerely,

Dorrie Main CottonGen Principal Investigator

Note from Dr. Andrew Paterson in reply to Dr. Thea Wilkins second email regarding access to genomic resources.

Having noted yesterday the merit of Dr. Wilkins libraries, ICGI members also may wish to consider that non-profit distribution centers including Texas A&M, CUGI/AGI, and PGML have BACs from the same genotypes used by Dr WIlkins. While these BACs would lack the value added by Dr Wilkins sequencing, they may be much less costly to obtain than those from a private vendor.

Dr. Wilkins unsupported comments about my BAC distribution record are incorrect. My policies were formulated under an NSF grant on which Dr. Wilkins was the PI. These policies and my record have been regularly reviewed and found satisfactory by my research sponsors. We have had an online ordering system (http://www.plantgenome.uga.edu/catalog/index.php?cPath=1) for many years, and requests are filled promptly. All who have requested BACs from me have received them. Likewise, our probe sequences were deposited in Genbank soon after their completion, and genome sequences that I have overseen were publicly released nearly a year (for cotton, and nearly 2 years for sorghum) in advance of publication.

Best wishes to all. Andrew Paterson, Chair, ICGI and Regents Professor, University of Georgia.

Dorrie Main, Ph.D. Associate Professor of Bioinformatics Department of Horticulture Washington State University 45 Johnson Hall Pullman, WA 99164-6414

Tel: 509-335-2774 Email: dorrie@wsu.edu URL: www.bioinfo.wsu.edu