In the interest of cloning and analyzing the genes responsible for two very different diseases, the Rubinstein-Taybi syndrome (RTS) and acute myeloid leukemia (AML) associated with the somatic translocation t(8;16)(p11;p13.3), we constructed a high-resolution restriction map of contiguous cosmids (contig) covering 1.2 Mb of chromosome 16p13.3. By fluorescence in situ hybridization and Southern blot analysis, we assigned all tested RTS and t(8;16) translocation breakpoints to a 100-kb region. We have previously reported exact physical locations of these 16p breakpoints, which all disrupt one gene we mapped to this interval: the CREB-binding protein (CBP or CREBBP) gene. Intriguingly, mutations in the CBP gene are responsible for RTS as well as the t(8;16)-associated AML. CBP functions as an integrator in the assembly of various multiprotein regulatory complexes and is thus necessary for transcription in a broad range of transduction pathways. We report here the cloning, physical mapping, characterization, and full cDNA nucleotide sequence of the human CBP gene.