Protocols for Chromosome-Mediated Gene Transfer: Selection Strategies, Transgenome Analysis, Enrichment Cloning, and Mapping

Linkage studies in humans are strictly limited by such factors as family structure, the availability of material for study, and informative markers for linkage analysis. Parasexual approaches therefore have a particularly important role to play in human genetics (1 ). A panoply of somatic cell genetic methods have been devised and exploited. These include (1) immortalizing experimental and clinical mutations and chromosome aberrations as lymphoblastoid cell lines (Chapter 5 and 17 ) and (2) segregating individual chromosome or subchromosome fragments one from another by cell fusion or gene transfer for (a) physical mapping of existing markers, and (b) as the starting material for enrichment cloning by one technique or another. I will focus here on the technique of chromosome-mediated gene transfer, a somatic cell genetic method that can bridge the gap between the functional and molecular analysis of single genes or whole chromosomes.