Gene Mapping

"Gene mapping" refers to the mapping of genes to specific locations on chromosomes. It is a critical step in the understanding of genetic diseases.
There are two types of gene mapping:
Genetic Mapping - using linkage analysis to determine the relative position between two genes on a chromosome.
Physical Mapping - using all available techniques or information to determine the absolute position of a gene on a chromosome. What are genome maps used for?
What are genome maps used for? Genome maps help scientists find genes, particularly those involved in human disease. This process is much like a scientific game of hot and cold. Scientists study many families affected by a disease, tracing the inheritance of the disease and of specific genome landmarks through several generations. Landmarks that tend to be inherited along with the disease are likely to be located close to the disease gene and become "markers" for the gene in question.
Courtesy of the National Library of Medicine.
Once they have identified a few such markers, scientists know the approximate location of the disease gene. In this way, they narrow down their search from the entire 3-billion-base-pair genome to a region of the genome a few million base pairs long.
Next, they look for genes in that part of the genome and study the genes one by one to learn which one is involved in the disease. For example, they might look for a gene that has a different sequence in people with the disease than it does in healthy people. Or they might look for a gene with a function that could be related to the disease.
Genes for cystic fibrosis, Huntington's disease, and many other inherited diseases have been identified by this method. But it's a time-consuming, laborious process. Several million base pairs is still a lot of DNA, and a region of the genome that size may contain dozens of genes for scientists to sort through. Imagine you have a road map that can get you to the right neighborhood, but then you have to drive around and knock on doors until you find the house you're looking for.
In the future, researchers hope that more detailed genome maps will help them find genes faster, leading them straight to each gene the way you can look at a road map and determine the sequence of streets that will take you exactly where you want to go. A more detailed map would also help scientists study complex human diseases and traits that involve many genes for example, cancer, heart disease, and personality.
In addition to helping in the search for genes, genome maps are useful in the day-to-day activities of molecular biology laboratories. In the lab, the human genome lives in the form of "clones" chunks of DNA that have been chopped up and spliced into the DNA of bacteria or other cells. This method keeps each chunk of the genome separate from the others and available in many copies for easy experiment and study.
Maps provide a language of landmarks that help scientists work with DNA in this form. For example, choose a clone at random and analyze which landmarks it contains, and you will know which "neighborhood" of the genome the clone comes from. By the same token, if you are looking for a particular part of the genome and know which landmarks are found there, you can rapidly sort through many clones to find the desired one.
Genome maps also help scientists find and learn about other important parts of the genome, such as the regulatory regions that help control when genes are turned on and off. Maps help scientists keep track of which colleagues are studying nearby or related parts of the genome, so they can learn from each other and don't duplicate each other's work. They illuminate the overall structure of the genome places where several related genes are clustered together, for example, or parts of the genome that contain an unusually rich concentration of genes. Finally, genome maps enable scientists to compare the genomes of different species, yielding insights into the process of evolution.

Gene Mapping

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"Gene mapping" refers to the mapping of genes to specific locations on chromosomes. It is a critical step in the understanding of genetic diseases.

There are two types of gene mapping:

Courtesy of the National Library of Medicine.

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