Segmental Duplications in Subtelomeric Regions of Human Chromosome 13

Owing to a great progress in studying the human genome, its euchromatic portion is almost completely sequenced; the complete sequence is still unknown only for pericentric and telomeric regions and short arms of acrocentric chromosomes. Extended satellite blocks and segmental duplications located in these regions substantially hinder the joining of the sequenced fragments and construction of the full-length genome map. The sequence was established for a 1.5-kb human chromosome 13 subtelomeric region, which is about 10 kb away from the rDNA cluster, and deposited in GenBank under accession no. AF478540. The region showed 83–84% homology to the pericentric region of human chromosome 19, and contained short fragments homologous to the pericentric region of human chromosome 13. The results may contribute to the current revision of genome evolution concepts in view of numerous segmental duplications revealed.