Somatic cell hybrids containing different deleted regions of chromosome 18 derived from patients with balanced translocations or terminal deletions were used to create a deletion mapping panel. Twenty-four sequence-tagged sites (STSs) for 17 genes and 7 anonymous polymorphic DNA fragments were identified. These STSs were used to map the 24 loci to 18 defined regions of chromosome 18. Both ERV1, previously mapped to 18q22-q23, and YES1, previously mapped to 18q21.3, were found to map to 18q11.21-pter. Several genes previously mapped to 18q21 were found to be in the order cen-SSAV1-DCC-FECH-GRP-BCL2-PLANH2-tel. The precise mapping of genes to chromosome 18 should help in determining whether these genes may be involved in the etiology of specific chromosomal syndromes associated with chromosome 18. The mapping of the polymorphic loci will assist in the integration of the physical map with the recombination map of chromosome 18.