The 11q- chromosome in the human monoblastic cell line U937 appears to be derived from an interstitial deletion in bands 11q21-23/24 or a translocation with an unknown chromosome. We show here by in situ hybridisation that this chromosome has lost the c-ets1 and T3 gamma loci. C-ets1 and T3 gamma sequences were not detected on any chromosomes besides the normal 11, indicating either that they were lost from the genome or that the chromosome to which they were translocated was not present in a high enough proportion of the cells to be detected by in situ hybridisation. No DNA rearrangements were found with three different restriction enzymes in the c-ets1, N-CAM, Thy-1 and c-sea genes detected by our probes. There was also no detectable rearrangement in the c-fms gene which was shown to be translocated from chromosome 5 to chromosome 1 in a subline of U937. The size of the c-fms and c-ets1 messages were normal. The possible significance of these findings is discussed.