FINE GENETIC AND COMPARATIVE MAPPING OF THE DEAFNESS MUTATION AMES WALTZER ON MOUSE-CHROMOSOME-10

The Ames waltzer (av) mouse mutant is an autosomal recessive deafness mutation on mouse Chromosome 10. Previously, au had not been mapped re lative to molecular markers. We have performed an intersubspecific bac kcross with Mus musculus castaneus and mapped microsatellite markers i n this cross. Toothpick PCR on previously frozen tissue samples from o ffspring was used as an efficient strategy to screen a large number of animals quickly. In 1258 progeny tested we found three recombinants f or each of the flanking markers D10Mif199 and D10Mit64. In addition, n ine different genes (Ank3 Bcr, Gnat, Tfam, Mif, Mmp11, Dcoh, Pyp, and Gstt2) were mapped and eliminated genetically as candidate genes for a v. av had beers discussed as a potential mouse model for the human dea fness loci Usher syndrome type ID (USH1D) and DFNB12. Comparative mapp ing shows that av maps near ale evolutionary break point and makes it unlikely that those loci are human homologues of av. A human homologue of au is predicted to lie either on 22q11.2 or on 10q21. The orientat ion of conserved linkage groups between these two human chromosomal re gions relative to mouse Chromosome 10 was determined. (C) 1998 Academi c Press.