CLONING OF A BREAKPOINT CLUSTER REGION ON CHROMOSOME-14 IN UTERINE LEIOMYOMA

A recurrent reciprocal chromosomal translocation, t(12;14)(q15;q24) is frequently observed in uterine leiomyoma. Chromosome 12 breakpoints h ave been shown to occur in a region of approximately 150 kb that conta ins the gene for a high mobility group protein (HMGI-C). The breakpoin t region on chromosome 14 has not been precisely defined. We have gene rated a contig of overlapping yeast artificial chromosome (YAC) clones approximately 3 Mb in size. Fluorescence in situ hybridization (FISH) analysis showed that this contig spanned the t(12;14) breakpoints in three uterine leiomyomas and that the breakpoints in these tumors occu rred within a 1 Mb region. A 30 kb cosmid spanning one of the breakpoi nts was isolated to set the stage for identifying regions on chromosom e 14 that may cause this region to be a preferential site for chromoso mal translocation. Published by Elsevier Science Ireland Ltd.