01 Chromosomal Abnormalities Flashcards

Chromosomes, genes, non genes etc.

1
Q

What is the Paris convention?

A

Naming the chromosome of the chromosome with p and q for the arms

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2
Q

Which is the short arm?

A

p

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3
Q

Which is the long arm?

A

q

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4
Q

Which is near the centromere? 1p1 or 1p3?

A

1p1 is near the centromere

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5
Q

Which is near the telomere? 12p1 or 12q4

A

12q4 is near the telomere

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6
Q

How much DNA in each cell? (Length)

A

2 metres

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7
Q

How big is a cell?

A

10um across

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8
Q

What’s the purpose of the centromere?

A

It’s where 2 sister chromatids are joined together

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9
Q

What’s the sequence of the centromere like and why?

A

It has a long stretch of repetitive DNA. This provides an attachment point for the spindle fibres at the kinetochore

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10
Q

What do telomeres do?

A

Prevents the chromosome ends being treated as broken ends

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11
Q

What is the telomere sequence and structure?

A

TTAGGG repeated for 10-15kb with a loop at the end

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12
Q

What’s the order of the cell cycle?

A

G1 (creating more cell contents), S (duplicating chromosomes), G2 (checking DNA for errors and repairing them), M (separating duplicated DNA), cytokinesis

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13
Q

What’s the order of mitosis?

A

Interphase, Prophase, Metaphase, Anaphase and Telophase

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14
Q

Why is is tougher to study meiosis over mitosis?

A

For meiosis you either need a male biopsy or a fetal ovary

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15
Q

What are the three stages of meiosis?

A

Synapsis, recombination, segregation

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16
Q

What is synapsis?

A

In Meiosis where homologous chromosomes are paired during prophase I. The chromosomes are duplicated in this state, consisting of two sister chromatids joined by the centromere.

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17
Q

What is the structure called of the homologous pairs together in meiosis?

A

A four stranded bivalent or a tetrad

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18
Q

What happens at the meiosis stage called recombination

A

Any of the 4 strands in the bivalent swap segments over at cross over events

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19
Q

How many cross over events take place in males meiosis?

A

Approximately 60

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20
Q

What is segregation in meiosis?

A

Where the bivalents separate, cytokinesis occurs, and each 4 gametes are carrying a unique combination of parental alleles

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21
Q

What stage of the cell cycle do you need for conventional karyotyping and why?

A

Metaphase of meiosis. Chromosomes are most condensed here so easier to analyse their number, size and structure

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22
Q

What is the resolution of karyotyping?

A

4-5Mb

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23
Q

Why is karyotyping bad?

A

Needs a lot of skill, it’s slow, and it’s expensive

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24
Q

What questions does FISH answer?

A

Is this specific sequence in my patient and if so, where?

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25
Q

How do you do FISH?

A

You have a fluorescent probe for the sequence of interest, you slightly denature the chromosomes so they keep their structure, but let the probe hybridise.

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26
Q

What’s good about FISH?

A

Has a high resolution. And you can use multiple colours at a time. Can see balanced translocations.

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27
Q

What phase of the cell cycle do you need for FISH?

A

Interphase or metaphase is fine.

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28
Q

What’s bad about FISH?

A

You need to know what you’re looking for ahead of time

29
Q

What question does array CGH answer?

A

Is there any sequence that my patient has a CNV of in their genome?

30
Q

How do you do array CGH?

A

Fragment the patient DNA and stain it red. Stain a control green. Hybridise to a microarray with many probes from a normal genome. Read the fluorescence.

31
Q

What does a yellow well mean on array CGH?

A

There is equal patient and control DNA. No CNV

32
Q

What does a red well mean on array CGH?

A

There is more patient DNA than control DNA at that location. Patient has a copy number gain

33
Q

What does a green well mean on array CGH?

A

There is less patient DNA than control DNA at that location. Patient has a copy number loss

34
Q

What’s the resolution of array CGH?

A

Can be varied. You can change your probes. Depends on if you’re looking at the whole genome, or just a chromosome etc.

35
Q

What’s good about array CGH?

A

Quantitative information. You don’t need to know where you’re looking by default.

36
Q

What’s bad about array CGH?

A

Can’t detect balanced translocations as it provide no locational information.

37
Q

Explain SNP arrays

A

Patient’s DNA is hybridised to an array. Standard SNPs are assessed. The genotype is called and clustered. Can identify CNVs

38
Q

What’s good about SNP arrays?

A

Good coverage of the genome, can change resolution

39
Q

What’s bad about SNP arrays?

A

Can’t measure anything under a certain size (maybe 50 or 100Kb). Don’t get positional information

40
Q

What is DNA sequencing used for?

A

Well lots… Can use for comparing tumour cells to normal cells. Mainly used for NIPD in clinical genetics.

41
Q

What is long read seq good for?

A

Identifying large rearrangements. Transcriptomics.

42
Q

What are the two broad ways chromosomes can go wrong?

A

In number (aneuploidy) or in structure

43
Q

Name some types of structural abnormalities in chromosomes

A

Deletions, duplications, inversions, tranlocations (Both reciprocal or robertsonian).

44
Q

How does triploidy come about?
66% -
24% -
10% -

A

66% - 2 sperm
24% - A 2n sperm
10% - A 2n egg

45
Q

How do most aneuploidies come about?

A

A failure of chromosomes to segregate correctly during cell division.

46
Q

Aneuploidies can either be consitutional or mosaic, how?

A

Either have a failure during meiosis leading to a constitutional abnormality, or a failure during mitosis, this will lead to a clone of cells with aneuploidy creating a mosaic.

47
Q

What are the three constitutional trisomies that are compatible with life?

A

Downs (21), Edwards (18) and Patau (13) syndromes

48
Q

How could you live with an aneuploidy of say, chromosome 1

A

By it being a mosaic

49
Q

Why are sex chromosome aneuploidies less damaging?

A

There’s a small overlap between the X and Y, there are few shared genes.

50
Q

What aneuplodies exist with the sex chromosomes?

A

XXY Klinefelters, XYY Jacob’s syndrome, XXX, X Turner syndrome

51
Q

What is the general effect of someone having an aneuploidy?

A

Risk of infertility and miscarriages or abnormal babies

52
Q

Why are balanced translations or inversions not as bad as unbalanced translocations?

A

Because there is no overall change in the amount of DNA.Wh

53
Q

What is the sample type in Non Invasive Prenatal Diagnosis?

A

Cell free DNA from the baby that is naturally in the mother’s blood

54
Q

What can NIPD be used to detect?

A

Trisomies, because the cfDNA from the child will be slightly more abundant from the triploid chromosome.

55
Q

What do you have to adjust for in NIPD?

A

Chromosome length

56
Q

How do structural chromosomal abnormalities come about?

A

When there are two breaks in chromsomes and the areas are misrepaired giving an inversion, deletion, translocation etc.

57
Q

What can occur from aberrant recombination from mis-paired low-copy repeats?

A

Either deletions, duplications, or translocations

58
Q

What can stalled replication forks from DNA damage cause?

A

Complex chromosomal rearrangements

59
Q

What is replicative template switching?

A

When DNA replication forks stall, it’s a way for the DNA replication machinery to use microhomologies (of 3-5 nucleotides) to try and recontinue the process.

60
Q

What are the possible products of reciprocal translocations

A

Either two chromosomes with just a bit of DNA switched from each one. OR an acentric chromosome (no centromere) that gets degraded, and a dicentric chromosome which can be pulled in two directions at mitosis and break and cause a mess

61
Q

What is a robertsonian translocation?

A

The fusion of two chromosomes that have their cetromeres very close to the chromosome end.

62
Q

What chromosomes are usually involved in robertsonian translocations?

A

13, 14, 15, 21 and 22.

63
Q

What is true of the p arms involves in robertsonian translocations?

A

They share similar sequences

64
Q

What happens to the two chromosomes created from robertsonian translocations?

A

The double p arm chromosome can be degraded, but this can be OK because they have little on them and the p arms are all similar of chr 13, 14, 15, 21 and 22. And the double q chromsome can be kept healthily. But leads to issues at meiosis.

65
Q

When there’s been a reciprocal translocation, what are the possible results in meiosis?

A

1/4 completely normal
1/4 phenotypically normal carrier
1/4 partial trisomy of chrA and partial monosomy of chrB
1/4 partial trsiomy of chrB and partial monosomy of chrA

66
Q

When you’ve had a robertsonian translocation, say between one chr14, and one chr21, and the double p arm chromosome is lost, what are the 6 results when the gametes take part in fertilisation with a normal other gamete?
(You start with one chr14, one chr21, and a chr14/21 split)

A

1/6 Normal
1/6 balanced carrier
1/6 trisomy 14
1/6 monosomy 14
1/6 trisomy 21
1/6 monosomy 21

67
Q

What percentage of embryos abort spontaneously in the first trimester due to chromosomal abnormalities?

A

> 50%

68
Q

How many newborns have multiple congenital abnormalities due to chromosomal abnormalities?

A

1 in 200

69
Q

What’s one final topic that chromosomal abnormalities are important to but we haven’t mentioned yet?

A

Cancer