Toward positional cloning of the curly tail gene.

Background: The curly tail (ct) mutant mouse is one of the best-studied mouse models of spina bifida. The ct mutation has been localized to distal chromosome 4 in two independent studies and was recently postulated to be in the Grhl-3 gene.

Methods: A recombinant BALB/c-ct strain was generated and used to precisely map the ct gene.