Assignment of the structural gene for argininosuccinate synthetase to proximal mouse chromosome 2.

In order to develop linkage markers for the murine argininosuccinate synthetase locus (Ass-1), we have searched for restriction fragment length polymorphisms in the mouse genome using cloned sequences from the mouse arginosuccinate synthetase structural gene. Five restriction fragment length polymorphisms were found among the recombinant inbred progenitor strains AKR/J, BALB/cByJ, C3H/HeJ, C57BL/6J, C57L/J, DBA/2J, and SWR/J. Of these, four polymorphisms were found to distinguish the SWR/J strain from the other six strains, which all had the same fragment. The fifth polymorphism revealed differences among the progenitor strains for recombinant inbred strain sets AKXL, BXD, and SWXL. The strain distribution pattern for this polymorphism indicated close linkage of Ass-1 to Hc (the fifth component of complement) on proximal mouse chromosome 2 with a recombination fraction of 0.016 and a 95% confidence interval of 0.003 to 0.054. These data place Ass-1 in a syntenic group with the genes Hc, Abl, Fpgs, and Ak-1 whose linkage has been conserved between human chromosome 9q and mouse chromosome 2.