Development of a somatic cell hybrid mapping panel and molecular probes for human chromosome 3.

A somatic cell hybrid mapping panel and molecular probes have been developed for human chromosome 3. This panel defines 11 regions for the short and long arms of the chromosome. Four hundred thirty-two probes have been mapped using these hybrids. One hundred thirty-one of these probes were derived from EcoRI and HindIII flow-sorted libraries. The remaining 301 probes were isolated from NotI boundary and random (partial MboI) libraries constructed from a hybrid that provided a relative enrichment in 3p DNA sequences. For some regions of the chromosome, significant differences in the distribution of probes were noted. This was observed for both the unique sequence flow-sorted and NotI probes. These differences are in agreement with previous suggestions that Giemsa light bands are GC-rich, and therefore gene-rich (especially housekeeping genes), and that the Giemsa dark bands may contain DNA that is more highly condensed. The isolation of probes from different types of libraries, or by different screening strategies, appears to reduce deficiencies that might arise from the use of probes derived with a more limited approach. These hybrids and probes should facilitate the construction of physical and genetic linkage maps to identify various disease loci involving chromosome 3.