Human papillomavirus type 16 integrations in cervical tumors frequently occur in common fragile sites

The development of cervical cancer is highly associated with human papillom avirus (HPV) infection, HPV integration into the genome of infected cervica l cells is temporally associated with the acquisition of the malignant phen otype, A relationship between the sites of HPV integration in cervical canc er and the position of the common fragile sites (CFSs) has been observed at the cytogenetic level, To explore this relationship at the molecular level , we used a PCR-based method to rapidly isolate cellular sequences flanking the sites of HPV16 integrations in primary cervical tumors, Human bacteria l artificial chromosome clones were isolated based on these flanking sequen ces and used as probes for fluorescence in situ hybridization on metaphases derived from cells cultured in the presence of aphidicolin, Our data demon strate that HPV16 integrations in cervical tumors frequently occur within C FSs at the molecular level, In addition, we have determined the precise mol ecular locations of the CFSs FRA6C and FRA17B.