Use of human alpha-satellite deoxyribonucleic acid to detect Y-specific centromeric sequences.

The Y alphoid deoxyribonucleic acid probe Y97 has proved to be specific for the human Y centromere and to define a Y-specific 5.5 kb Eco RI fragment. Three experiments were designed to evaluate the sensitivity and the specificity of this Y alphoid probe Y97. In the first experiment the centromeric Y-specific 5.5 kb Eco RI fragment was clearly seen in the mixture of 0.050 microgram of male DNA with 4.950 micrograms of female DNA (1%). In the second experiment the same dilutional study was applied to the Yq11-related probe 4B-2 for comparison purpose. In the third experiment, hybridization with the Y97 probe was performed on 20 subjects with mosaic cell lines containing a cytogenetically identifiable Y (n = 10) and a cytogenetically unidentifiable minute (n = 10) fragment. Nineteen of the 20 subjects demonstrated the Y-specific 5.5 kb Eco RI hybridization band with the centromeric Y97 probe. These experiments demonstrated the utility of the Y97 probe to consistently identify cytogenetically altered Y chromosome fragments and confirm the mapping of the alphoid repeat sequences to the centromeric region of the Y chromosome.