Possible involvement of unstable sites on chromosomes 7 and 14 in human cancer.

Specific sites on human chromosomes appear to have a tendency to rearrange in so-called "sporadic translocations," which are found in approximately 1 of 1000 metaphases from peripheral blood lymphocyte cultures. We now present data that implicates four sites in the human genome as displaying this distinct type of chromosomal instability (7p13, 7q34, 14q11, and 14q32). Chromosome 14q11 was found to be involved in sporadic translocations most often, followed by 7p13 greater than 7q34 greater than 14q32. The 14q11 locus also shows the highest frequency of spontaneous sister chromatid exchange. It is proposed that these sporadic translocations involving chromosomes #7 and #14 arise following recombinational errors occurring at sites of T- and B-cell genes known to be located at these four sites. Evidence is presented that in some cases "fixation" of a sporadic translocation might be involved in malignancy of lymphoid origin.