The mutations in X chromosome-linked diseases are frequently heterogeneous, and yet only a small fraction can be detected by Southern analysis. We therefore adapted the chemical cleavage method of Cotton et al. [Cotton, R. G. H., Rodrigues, N. R. & Campbell, R. D. (1988) Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. USA 85, 4397-4401] and the polymerase chain reaction to rapidly scan for point mutations in X chromosome-linked ornithine transcarbamoylase (carbamoyl-phosphate: L-ornithine carbamoyltransferase, EC 2.1.3.3.) deficiency. This simple heteroduplex mapping method identified different mismatch sites in polymerase chain reaction-amplified liver cDNA from five unrelated ornithine transcarbamoylase-deficient patients. The predicted sequence alteration was confirmed by DNA sequencing in all five patients and indicated a likely disease-causing mutation in four of these patients. In one atypical ornithine transcarbamoylase-deficient patient a sequence alteration compatible with a cDNA polymorphism was found. One family was studied in detail. Female-carrier detection was performed by chemical cleavage of amplified genomic DNA and verified by allele-specific oligonucleotide hybridization. This mutation scanning approach is simple, sensitive, and applicable to many genetic loci.