Complete set of eleven region-specific microdissection libraries for human chromosome 2

The construction and characterization of 11 region-specific libraries for the entire human chromosome 2 have been completed, including four libraries for the short arm and six libraries for the long arm, plus a library for the centromere region. These libraries were constructed using the chromosome microdissection and microcloning technology. Eight libraries have been described previously. This paper presents the final three libraries: 2q21-q22 (designated 2Q5 library), 2q11-q14 (2Q6). and 2p11.1-q11.1 (2CEN). The sizes of the dissected regions ranged between 20 and 30 Mb, with the centromere region of about 4 Mb. All these libraries are large, potentially comprising hundreds of thousands of recombinant microclones. Between 77% and 97% of the microclones were shown to derive from respective dissected regions. From 26 to 66 unique sequence microlones were isolated and characterized in detail for each library. The microclones have short inserts, ranging between 50 and 600 bp, with a mean of about 200 bp. The short inserts can be conveniently sequenced as STSs to provide high density probes for the dissected region. A plasmid sub-library containing at least 20,000 microclones, and usually more, has been prepared from each library and deposited to ATCC for general distribution. The libraries have been used effectively in constructing high resolution physical maps and for contig assembly, as well as in positional cloning of disease genes assigned to the dissected region. Comparing to other chromosomes with detailed mapping information and densely populated probes, chromosome 2 remains largely under-exploited. The availability of a complete set of region-specific libraries and unique sequence microclones from the libraries should provide valuable resources for genome analysis, high resolution physical mapping, region-specific cDNA isolation, and positional cloning for chromosome 2.