SYNTENY CONSERVATION OF THE HUNTINGTONS-DISEASE GENE AND SURROUNDING LOCI ON MOUSE CHROMOSOME-5

The mouse homologs of the Huntington's disease (HD) gene and 17 other human Chromosome (Chr) 4 loci (including six previously unmapped) were localized by use of an interspecific cross. All loci mapped in a continuous linkage group on mouse Chr 5, distal to En2 and Il6, whose human counterparts are located on Chr 7. The relative order of the loci on human Chr 4 and mouse Chr 5 was maintained, except for a break between D5H4S115E and Idua/rd, with relocation of the latter to the opposite end of the map. The mouse HD homolog (Hdh) mapped within a cluster of seven genes that were completely linked in our data set. In human these loci span a similar to 1.8 Mb stretch of human 4p16.3 that has been entirely cloned. To date, there is no phenotypic correspondence between human and mouse mutations mapping to this region of synteny conservation.