Suppressed recombination on mouse chromosome 15 defined regions of chromosomal inversions associated with koala (koa) and hairy ears (eh) mutations.

Koala (Koa) and hairy ears (Eh) mutations of mice are associated with chromosomal inversions in the distal half of chromosome 15. Since these two mutant mice show some common phenotypic features including extra hair on pinna and craniofacial dysmorphogenesis and have similar inverted regions, we determined the inverted regions of these two chromosomal inversions to examine whether a common gene is responsible for the phenotypes of these two mutants. The inverted regions were identified as the recombination-suppressed regions by linkage analysis.