The map of chromosome 1 of man

Making maps is an essential procedure in the exploration of new territories. In the field of genetics, many basic concepts concerning the structure of a genome and the regulation of gene activity have emerged from regional mapping studies on the chromosomes of e.g. Escherichia coli and Drosophila melanogaster. The studies on Drosophila owe much of their significance to the suitability of this organism for correlation of data on gene linkage and gene expression with data on morphological and biochemical differentiation along chromosomes. Whereas chromosome mapping in Drosophila has a history of more than half a century, the history of regional mapping of human chromosomes covers slightly more than half a decade. The experimental approaches employed within that short period, although, show a striking diversity. This development was possible because several important techniques became available almost simultaneously.