The physical map of Mus musculus chromosome 11 reveals evolutionary relationships with different syntenic groups of genes in Homo sapiens.

The physical localization of sequences homologous to three cloned genes was determined by in situ hybridization to metaphase chromosomes. Previous work had assigned the skeletal myosin heavy chain gene cluster (Myh), the functional locus for the cellular tumor antigen p53 (Trp53-1), and the cellular homologue of the viral erb-B oncogene (Erbb) to Mus musculus chromosome 11 (MMU11). Our results provide regional assignments of Myh and Trp53-1 to chromosome bands B2----C, and of Erbb to bands A1----A4. Taken together with in situ mapping of three other loci on MMU 11 (Hox-2 homeobox-containing gene cluster, the Sparc protein, and the Colla-1 collagen gene), which have been reported elsewhere, these data allowed us to construct a physical map of MMU11 and to compare it with the linkage map of this chromosome. The map positions of the homologous genes on human chromosomes suggest evolutionary relationships of distinct regions of MMU11 with six different human chromosome arms: 1p, 5q, 7p, 16p, 17p, and 17q. The delineation of conserved chromosome regions has important implications for the understanding of karyotype evolution in mammalian species and for the development of animal models of human genetic diseases.