BAC/PAC COLLECTION FOR MOLECULAR CYTOGENETICS

We have been supported in the past years by Telethon and AIRC to produce resources for molecular cytogenetics (see our Web site http://www.biologia.uniba.it/rmc/). Large panels of whole-chromosome painting probes, partial chromosome paints, and YAC clones have been created or characterized. The Human Genome Project, in the meanwhile, has produced contigs of BAC/PAC clones covering the entire human genome, as intermediate step toward genome sequencing. BAC/PACs are an excellent tool in a wide range of research and clinical applications, molecular cytogenetics in particular. Our goal is the setup of a BAC/PAC collection, composed of approximately 6000 probes evenly distributed along the human genome (500 kb apart), free available to the scientific community (primarily Italian). The clones will be freely distributed as stabs. In case of adequate support we will perform also DNA extraction, from each clone, for free distribution. Consider that a very small amount of DNA (100-200 ng), is enough for DOP-PCR amplification to be used in FISH experiments. This last point was conceived for the following reasons: not all the laboratories have facilities for BAC culture, DNA extraction etc. On the contrary, the majority of them have a PCR machine that can be used to perform a DOP-PCR amplification. The strategies to achieve these goals are well implemented in our laboratory and will be illustrated below. Our laboratory is a well established in the field and well known for this kind of support: since January 2000 we have received more than 260 probe requests from all over the world (see below). The page dedicated to chromosome 22 (http://www.biologia.uniba.it/rmc/2-YAC-BAC/YAC-BAC-Chromosome/BAC-22.html), which was the first human chromosome to be sequenced, can give an exact idea of our final goal, consisting of a BAC/PAC panel for each human chromosome, each probe positioned on the sequence of the chromosome.