COMPARATIVE MAPPING OF THE HUMAN ESTROGEN-RECEPTOR (ESR) AND THE KALLMANN (KAL) REGIONS TO THE CHROMOSOMES OF THE GREAT APES

Human and great. ape chromosomes display significant concordance by mo lecular and cytogenetic techniques, which mag reflect their common ori gin. Nevertheless, chromosomal banding techniques did not reflect the syntenic homology at the DNA level, which created controversy and deba te, The recent availability of the unique sequence loci-specific human estrogen receptor (ESR) (bq25.1) region and Kallmann (KAL) (Xp22.3) D NA probes have prompted us to seal ch the degree of DNA sequence synte ny among chimpanzee, gorilla, and orangutan by the FISH technique. The conservation of the ESR and Kallmann regions at the corresponding equ ivalent loci of the great ape chromosomes (5q25 and Xp22, respectively ) has provided insights into genome evolution and facilitated assignme nt of map locations for human unique DNA sequences, These findings are aimed toward developing an augmented framework to determine with grea ter certainty the pathway of human descent at the single gene level. ( C) 1997 Wiley-Liss, Inc.