Confirmation and refinement of the localisation of the c-MEL locus on chromosome 19 by physical and genetic mapping.

The human gene locus c-MEL was identified following transfection of genomic DNA from the human melanoma cell line NK14; it has previously been assigned to chromosome 19 (p13.2-q13.2) by analysis of somatic cell hybrids. We have further refined the position of this gene to the proximal region of 19p (cen-p13.2), using cell hybrids containing only fragments of human chromosome 19. We have confirmed this physical localisation by linkage analysis with a recently described restriction fragment length polymorphism for the c-MEL gene, and mapped the locus within the region of the low density lipoprotein receptor gene (LDLR) (Lod 4.43, theta = 0.10) and the anonymous marker D19S11 (13.1.25) (Lod 9.33, theta = 0). This gene thus maps to a region of chromosome 19 involved in karyotypic abnormalities in a variety of malignancies including melanomas and leukaemias.