We have isolated a highly polymorphic sequence from the Down syndrome critical region on human chromosome 21. This is a particularly useful marker because it lies adjacent to the locus D21S55, which is most closely associated with the major defects on Down syndrome. Other than this marker, few other variable sequences are known in this region (including other restriction fragment length polymorphisms or CA repeats) and therefore D21S1448 will be extremely helpful not only for people studying the inheritance of portions of chromosome 21 with respect to Down syndrome, but also for those carrying out linkage analysis of the chromosome.