A gene contributing to human growth has previously been tentatively mapped to the long arm of the Y chromosome. In the present study, recently developed sequence-tagged site markers covering the entire Y chromosome were used to define deletion breakpoints in 15 males with partial deletions of Yq. By correlating the height of these individuals with their deletion breakpoints, we located a region whose presence or absence has a marked effect on stature. This critical region comprises the most proximal portion of the long arm, extending from marker sY78 in interval 4B to marker sY94 in interval 5G of the proximal long arm.