| Abstract
| - We examined the progesterone receptor (PgR) gene in tissue from both primary human breast tumors and normal placentas, detecting restriction fragment length polymorphisms(RFLPS) with the restriction endonucleases PstVSst I and HindIII. There was a general agreement of the Pst I and Sst I polymorphisms in any individual tumor, suggesting that they define two alleles in the human PgR locus, one being characterized by a deletion of about 300 base pairs with respect to the other. Both primary human breast tumor speciments(n=36) and human term placentas (n=48) displayed similar allele frequencies and typical medelian distribution of these Pst I/Sst I alleles. The previously reported HindIII PgR RFLP was also investigated in 132 breast tumors. The HindIII PgR gene RFLP did not display typical mendelian distribution in the breast tumors; the factors affecting the HindIII allele frequencies are presently unknown. Neither the HindIII RFLP nor the deletion defined by Pst I and Sst I correlated with PgR expression as determined by a ligand-binding assay, suggesting that neither is related to the heterogeneity of PgR expression seen in breast tumors. [J Natl Cancer Inst 83: 1157-1160, 1991]
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