Chromosome 5 is one of the largest human chromosomes yet has one of the lowest gene densities. This is partially explained by numerous gene-poor regions that display a remarkable degree of noncoding and syntenic conservation with non-mammalian vertebrates, suggesting they are functionally constrained. In total, we compiled 177.7 million base pairs of highly accurate finished sequence containing 923 manually curated protein-encoding genes including the protocadherin and interleukin gene families and the first complete versions of each of the large chromosome 5 specific internal duplications. These duplications are very recent evolutionary events and play a likely mechanistic role, since deletions of these regions are the cause of debilitating disorders including spinal muscular atrophy (SMA).

We report here the 78,884,754 base pairs of finished human chromosome 16 sequence, representing over 99.9 percent of its euchromatin. Manual annotation revealed 880 protein coding genes confirmed by 1,637 aligned transcripts, 19 tRNA genes, 341 pseudogenes and 3 RNA pseudogenes. These genes include metallothionein, cadherin and iroquois gene families, as well as the disease genes for polycystic kidney disease and acute myelomonocytic leukemia. Several large-scale structural polymorphisms spanning hundreds of kilobasepairs were identified and result in gene content differences across humans. One of the unique features of chromosome 16 is its high level of segmental duplication, ranked among the highest of the human autosomes. While the segmental duplications are enriched in the relatively gene poor pericentromere of the p-arm, some are involved in recent gene duplication and conversion events which are likely to have had an impact on the evolution of primates and human disease susceptibility.