Localization and linkage of three polymorphic DNA sequences on human chromosome 20.

The D20S6 locus has been sublocalized by in situ hybridization using the pD3H12 probe to human chromosome band 20p12 and the D20S4 locus using the pMS1-27 probe to 20q13.2. A rare new restriction fragment length polymorphism detected in MspI-digested DNA by the pMSI-27 probe is reported. Linkage studies in nine families have shown that the D20S6 locus is linked to D20S5 (formerly mapped to 20p12 by in situ hybridization) with a maximum likelihood estimate of 0.07 for the recombination frequency (lod score = 9.07) and a confidence interval of 0.02 to 0.14. Estimated recombination frequencies were similar in males and females. Using both two- and multipoint analyses, linkage of D20S4 with the D20S5 and D20S6 loci was excluded and the suggested order for the three loci on chromosome 20 is D20S5-D20S6-centromere-D20S4. D20S5 and D20S6 are very useful markers for linkage studies because of their close proximity and reasonably good polymorphic information content values.