Painting of defined chromosomal regions by in situ suppression hybridization of libraries from laser-microdissected chromosomes

"Painting" of defined chromosomal regions provides a powerful tool for cytogenetic analyses. Here, we demonstrate that chromosomal in situ suppression (CISS)-hybridization of DNA libraries derived by microcloning laser-microdissected chromosomal regions can be applied to achieve this goal. As an example, we used unbanded metaphase spreads from a female patient carrying a balanced translocation. t(1;7)(1qter----1p36::7q11----7qter). Fragments from the long arms of 130 translocation chromosomes were microdissected. After microcloning, human inserts with an average size of about 3 kb were pooled from 400 recombinant bacteriophage DNA clones and used as a complex probe set in CISS-hybridization experiments. This resulted in painting of the translocation chromosome along the region 7q35 to 1p31. Painted chromosomal subregions in normal chromosomes 1 and 7 were consistent with this finding. This approach may be used to perform painting of any chromosome regions for which microlibraries can be established. Possible applications include the definition of marker chromosomes in clinical and tumor cytogenetics and studies of chromosomal evolution, as well as studies of nuclear chromosome topography in animal and plant species.