A human alphoid DNA clone from the EcoRI dimeric family: genomic and internal organization and chromosomal assignment

We isolated an alpha satellite DNA clone (pC1.8), 17 kb long, which is composed exclusively of tandemly repeated 340-bp EcoRI fragments. Hybridization studies using 37 random EcoRI dimers subcloned from pC1.8 showed that they are heterogeneous. The sequence of 5 dimers, 3 of them adjacent, confirmed this observation and showed that the heterogeneity is more accentuated among the second monomers. The chromosomal assignment under high stringency conditions showed that this alphoid subset is located on chromosomes 1, 5, and 19. No conditions that eliminate the hybridization on any one of those chromosomes were found. This suggests that, in contrast to many other chromosome-specific alpha satellite subsets, the single chromosome subsets of this family are virtually indistinguishable by hybridization techniques.