A High-Resolution STS, EST, and Gene-Based Physical Map of the Hereditary Paraganglioma Region on Chromosome 11q23

The genes responsible for hereditary paragangliomas (glomus tumors, MIM No. 168000) have been mapped to two distinct loci on the long arm of chromosome 11. Most of the informative families appear to be linked to the distal locus on chromosome 11q23 (PGL1), which has been previously confined to a 2-cM interval by haplotype analysis in an extended Dutch pedigree. To facilitate the identification of the PGL1 disease gene, we constructed an approximately 4-Mb ordered clone contig map of Sequence tagged sites, expressed sequence tags (ESTs), and known genes that spans the PGL1 critical region on chromosome 11q23. Among 29 new positional candidate ESTs, only two (EST100999 and EST241777) mapped within the PGL1 critical region. We further characterized the genomic organization of the promyelocytic leukemia zinc finger (PLZF) gene that maps within the PGL1 critical region and physically excluded the serotonin receptor type 3 (5HT3R) gene. Finally, we identified a common, silent, single-base substitution polymorphism in the 5HT3R gene and characterized the allele sets of two new highly polymorphic microsatellite repeats within the PGL1 critical region.