[Developing a physical map of human chromosome 22 using Pace electrophoresis and large fragment cloning]. Annual report, October 1, 1990--September 30, 1991

Recent technical progress in molecular biology has made the mapping of entire mammalian chromosomes an attainable goal. However, a number of problems must still be overcome before genome mapping becomes rapid, efficient, and reliable. The limited size of cosmid inserts, as well as their tendency to rearrange, necessitates construction of very large libraries for mapping, due to the many gaps encountered in aligning cosmid contigs. Larger fragments can be cloned using the phage P1, but the maximum size of cloned inserts is fixed at only twice that of cosmids. The power of YACs has been demonstrated in isolating large regions of human DNA, recombining them to build up even larger regions and closing gaps in cosmid based maps. However, existing YAC libraries contain a high proportion of chimeric clones, and YACs are difficult to use for detailed mapping, often requiring recloning into cosmid sized pieces. The work has addressed some of these issues by creating an alternative and complementary approach to cloning and mapping large DNA