The GSTM1, GSTM2, GSTM3, GSTM4, and GSTM5 glutathione transferase genes have been mapped to human chromosome 1 by using locus-specific PCR primer pairs spanning exon 6, intron 6, and exon 7, as probes on DNA from human/hamster somatic cell hybrids. For GSTM1, the assignment was confirmed by Southern blot hybridization to a pair of 12.5/2.4-kb HindIII fragments. The GSTM1-specific primer pairs can be used to identify individuals carrying non-null GSTM1 alleles. The organization of these five genes was confirmed by the isolation of a yeast artificial chromosome clone (GSTM-YAC2) that contains all five genes. With this clone, the location of the GSTM1-GSTM5 gene cluster on chromosome 1 was confirmed by fluorescence in situ hybridization. Both regional assignment using the fractional length method and examination of probe signal with reference to R-banded chromosomes induced by BrdU places the gene cluster in or near the 1p13.3 region. The close physical proximity of the GSTM1 and GSTM2 loci, which share 99% nucleotide sequence identity over 460 nucleotides of 3'-untranslated mRNA, suggests that the GSTM1-null allele may result from unequal crossing-over.