A human HD fragment containing a polyglutamine-repeat expansion was isolated from a clone derived from a patient with Huntington's disease. The transgene contained approximately 1 kb of 5' UTR region, exon 1 which initially contained 142 CAG repeats, and 262 bp of intron 1. Subsequent analysis showed that the number of CAG repeats was prone to increase when inherited through the male line due to instability in the germline. A range of 141 to 157 was observed. On a background that involves C57BL/6 and CBA, transgenic mice have been observed to carry >(CAG)200 repeat expansions. The insertion site has been localized to a position on mouse chromosome 4 in an intron of predicted gene GM12695. The transgene is ubiquitously expressed.