[First generation of the physical map of the human genome]

Sets of ordered overlapping cloned genomic fragments, spanning each of the human chromosomes are urgently needed for identification of human disease genes. Such a physical map provides also a unique source of material to study structure and function of the genome. To achieve this goal we exhaustively analyzed the CEPH yeast artificial chromosome (YAC) library containing 33,000 clones, which insert sizes were individually measured. With 0.9 Mb average lengths these YACs cover an equivalent of 10 haploid genomes. Then, several mapping techniques were combined to generate multiple structural information for most of these clones. Finally, the library was screened with more than 2,000 genetic markers quasi-uniformly distributed along 90% of the genome. These results should allow the scientific community to construct detailed chromosomic maps. Moreover, we propose a data analysis strategy that produces a first generation integrated map covering most of the human genome.