Localization of the choline acetyltransferase (CHAT) gene to human chromosome 10

A cDNA clone encoding the complete sequence of porcine choline acetyltransferase (CHAT) isolated by S. Berrard et al. (1987, Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. USA 84: 9280-9284) was hybridized to TaqI digests of a panel of 25 human-rodent somatic cell hybrids and to a complementary panel of 10 human-rodent hybrids in order to determine the chromosomal localization of human CHAT. To enhance the detection of the human signal, hybridization and washings were performed under low stringency conditions on membranes presaturated with sonicated DNA from parental rodent strains. All informative human fragments had the same distribution among the hybrids, mapping CHAT to a single human chromosome. CHAT was assigned to chromosome 10 because all other chromosomes were eliminated by exclusion based on the analysis of the signal segregation. This result indicates that mutation of the CHAT gene cannot be responsible for the primary defect in familial Alzheimer's disease.