Human chromosome 11p15.3 is associated with chromosome aberrations in the Beckwith Wiedemann Syndrome and implicated in the pathogenesis of different tumor types including lung cancer and leukemias. To date, only single tumor-relevant genes with linkage to this region (e.g. LMO1) have been found suggesting that this region may harbor additional potential disease associated genes. Although this genomic area has been studied for years, the exact order of genes/chromosome markers between D11S572 and the WEE1 gene locus remained unclear. Using the FISH technique and PAC clones of the flanking markers we determined the order of the genomic markers. Based on these clones we established a PAC contig of the respective region. To analyse the chromosome area in detail the synteny of the orthologous region on distal mouse chromosome 7 was determined and a corresponding mouse clone contig established, proving the conserved order of the genes and markers in both species: "cen-WEE1-D11S2043-ZNF143-RANBP7-CEGF1- ST5-D11S932-LMO1-D11S572-TUB-tel", with inverted order of the murine genes with respect to the telomere/centromere orientation. The region covered by these contigs comprises roughly 1.6 MB in human as well as in mouse. The genomic sequence of the two subregions (around WEE1 and LMO1) in both species was determined using a shotgun sequencing strategy. Comparative sequence analysis techniques demonstrate that the content of repetitive elements seems to decline from centromere to telomere (52.6% to 34.5%) in human and in the corresponding murine region from telomere to centromere (41.87% to 27.82%). Genomic organisation of the regions around WEE1 and LMO1 was conserved, although the length of gene regions varied between the species in an unpredictable ratio. CpG islands were found conserved in putative promoter regions of the known genes but also in regions which so far have not been described as harboring expressed sequences.
Copyright 2001 S. Karger AG, Basel