Suitability of human chromosome-specific DNA libraries for mutagenicity studies in Macaca fascicularis

The development and use of chromosome-specific DNA probes to label entire human chromosomes has been an important advance in molecular cytogenetics. Fluorescence in situ hybridization using whole chromosome-specific DNA probes has been used to study both numerical and structural chromosomal aberrations in many human cell types. It would be useful if this technology could be applied to other animal species. However, whole chromosome-specific DNA probes have been reported for only human chromosomes. In this study, experiments were conducted to determine whether human probes could be used to label chromosomes of the cynomolgus monkey, Macaca fascicularis. The results demonstrate that some human DNA probes are suitable for the study of chromosomal aberrations in the monkey. Monkey chromosomes 1 and 4 labelled with human DNA probes had a strong, chromosome-specific labelling pattern. The probe for human chromosome 21 labelled the short arm on the monkey chromosome 2 and the probe for human chromosome 2 could not be detected on any of the monkey chromosomes.