REGIONS OF SEX-SPECIFIC HYPO-RECOMBINATION AND HYPER-RECOMBINATION IDENTIFIED THROUGH INTEGRATION OF 180 GENETIC-MARKERS INTO THE METRIC PHYSICAL MAP OF HUMAN-CHROMOSOME-19

The order of and physical distance between 180 polymorphic markers, ma ny from the Genethon and CHLC genetic maps, have been determined throu gh inclusion of probe-positive cosmids in the metric physical map of h uman chromosome 19. The markers incorporated into the physical map inc lude 38 genetic markers with heterozygosities of >0.8 and similar to 1 20 markers with heterozygosities of >0.60. The average distance betwee n markers in this integrated map is similar to 320 kb. Clustering of m arkers is noted in several regions of the chromosome; only II interval s exist where the distance between markers is greater than 1 Mb, with the largest gap being 1.6 Mb. The ratio of sex-average genetic distanc e from the Genethon and CHLC genetic linkage maps to physical distance in the metric map is approximately 1.7 cM/Mb for the entire chromosom e but ranges from 4 cM/Mb across the telomeric bands to 1 cM/Mb for th e centromeric cytogenetic bands. The recombination distance in males i s approximately twice that of females in the most telomeric bands but is only 10-25% of the activity observed in females in the more centrom eric bands. Seven regions along the chromosome are noted where the rec ombination distance between markers in one sex is greater than 10 time s the recombination distance in the other sex. The integration of gene tic markers into the high-resolution physical map of human chromosome 19 provides a framework for isolation of disease genes and resources f or studies of genome organization, such as regions of interesting reco mbinational activity. (C) 1998 Academic Press.