HUMAN CHROMOSOME-SPECIFIC CDNA LIBRARIES - NEW TOOLS FOR GENE IDENTIFICATION AND GENOME ANNOTATION

To date, only a small percentage of human genes have been cloned and m apped. To facilitate more rapid gene mapping and disease gene isolatio n, chromosome 5-specific cDNA libraries have been constructed from Fiv e sources. DNA sequencing and regional mapping of 205 unique cDNAs ind icates that 25 are from known chromosome 5 genes and 138 are from new chromosome 5 genes (a frequency of 79.5%). Sequence complexity estimat es indicate that each library contains similar to 20% of the similar t o 5000 genes that are believed to reside on chromosome 5. This study m ore than doubles the number of genes mapped to chromosome 5 and descri bes an important new tool for disease gene isolation.