Five candidate genes for hamster cardiomyopathy did not map to the cardiomyopathy locus by FISH analysis.

The Syrian cardiomyopathic hamster (BIO14.6), that develops both muscular dystrophy and progressive cardiomyopathy, is widely used as an animal model of autosomal recessive cardiomyopathy mimicking human hypertrophic cardiomyopathy, and five genes have been proposed as strong candidates for the cause of cardiomyopathy. We recently mapped the cardiomyopathy locus of the hamster to the centromeric region of chromosome 9qa2.1-b1 by construction of a genetic linkage map of the Syrian hamster. Thus, we analyzed the loci of the five candidate genes, alpha tropomyosin, cardiac troponin T, adhalin, calpain 3 and cardiac myosin binding protein-C, by the FISH method, and found that these genes were mapped on the distal portion of chromosome 12qa5 and 4pa2 and the proximal portion of chromosomes 9qb7, 1qc1.1 and 1qb3, respectively. These results provide strong evidence that the five candidate genes previously proposed are not related to the hamster cardiomyopathy.