Generation of Alphoid DNA Probes for Fluorescence In Situ Hybridization (FISH) Using the Polymerase Chain Reaction

Alpha satellite DNA is a primate-specific family of tandemly repeated sequences present in the centromeric regions of all human chromosomes (1 –3 ). The basic unit is a monomer repeat of approx 170 basepair (bp) that contains both sequences conserved among the different chromosomes and variable regions. Blocks of consecutive monomers comprise a chromosome-specific higher-order repeat of up to several kilobases (kb) in size. For most human chromosomes, specific multimeric higher-order repeat units have been described (for review, see ref. 4 ).