The following is a summary of presentations given during an ancillary meeting to the 1993 American Society of Human Genetics Meeting in New Orleans, LA. This ancillary meeting, entitled "Recent Research on Chromosome 4p Syndromes and Genes," reviewed the history of the Wolf-Hirschhorn syndrome (WHS), the natural history of patients with WHS, and the smallest region of deletion associated with the WHS. The proximal 4p deletion syndrome and the duplication 4p syndrome were also described and advice was offered regarding detection of chromosome 4p deletions, duplications, and rearrangements. The current status of the physical map of chromosome 4p with emphasis on the genes that map to the 4p16 region was presented along with a preliminary phenotypic map of 4p16. The goal of this format was to provide a comprehensive review of the clinical presentations, diagnostic capabilities, and genetic mapping advances involving chromosome 4p.