A 1200-KILOBASE TRANSCRIPTION MAP ENCOMPASSING THE D6S105 LOCUS AT 6P21.3

The gene content of the MHC class I telomerically adjacent region, in linkage disequilibrium with hereditary hemochromatosis, has not been w ell characterized yet. In the present work, we established three bacte rial clone contigs, including mainly P1-derived artificial chromosomes . These contigs cover 89% of the 1.2-Mb 6p-subtelomeric region encompa ssing locus D6S105. Terminal exon trapping was applied to selected clo nes from these contigs. Forty-six independent terminal exons were iden tified and mapped within the region, 2 of which matched perfectly to e xpressed sequence tags. These 3' exons are all expressed in human feta l brain but differentially expressed in four tissues and two cell line s. The high number of exons identified indicates that the high gene de nsity observed in the MHC class I region extends to this telomerically adjacent region. (C) 1997 Academic Press.