New sequence-based data on the relative DNA contents of chromosomes in the normal male and female human diploid genomes for radiation molecular cytogenetics

BACKGROUND: The objective of this work is to obtain the correct relative DNA contents of chromosomes in the normal male and female human diploid genomes for the use at FISH analysis of radiation-induced chromosome aberrations. RESULTS: The relative DNA contents of chromosomes in the male and female human diploid genomes have been calculated from the publicly available international Human Genome Project data. New sequence-based data on the relative DNA contents of human chromosomes were compared with the data recommended by the International Atomic Energy Agency in 2001. The differences in the values of the relative DNA contents of chromosomes obtained by using different approaches for 15 human chromosomes, mainly for large chromosomes, were below 2%. For the chromosomes 13, 17, 20 and 22 the differences were above 5%. CONCLUSION: New sequence-based data on the relative DNA contents of chromosomes in the normal male and female human diploid genomes were obtained. This approach, based on the genome sequence, can be recommended for the use in radiation molecular cytogenetics.