Study Unit 1 Flashcards
What materials are needed for karyotyping ?
Nucleated cells that can undergo cell division.
Example: 1. lymphocytes 2. Skin fibroblast 3. Bone marrow 4. Fetal cells in amniotic fluid
Karyotyping technique.
- Cultivate cells in tissue culture, stimulate to divide.
2 arrest cells in metaphase - Add hypotonic salt solution to swell cells for better spreading.
- Fix cells
- Drop cells onto microscope slides, releasing chromosomes.
- Stain with DNA binding dyes
- Visualise under light microscope
What substance stimulates mitosis ?
Phytohemgglutinin
Function of Colcemid
Stops mitosis in metaphase by inactivating spindle fiber formation.
Dark bands on a G-band represent?
AT rich area.
Highly condensed chromatin with little or no transcriptional activity will have a large portion of its histone protected from the trypsin and will therefore stain darkly following giemsa staining.
Light bands on a G-band represent ?
GC rich areas
Trypsin denatures euchromatic histones in DNA regions with higher transcriptional activity (loosely packed chromatin) resulting in light bands.
Pros G-banded karyotyping
- Whole genome analysis
- Overall impression
- Can use blindly, no prior knowledge required
- Can detect balance chromosome changes
- Can detect polyploidies and mosaics
Cons of G-banded karyotype.
- Low resolution (1-10Mb)
- Needs to be in metaphase thus cells need to be cultured.
- Labour intensive and specialised
- Time consuming, time delay to results (3-14 days)
Define Polyploidy and give examples
Definition: numerical change in a whole set of chromosomes.
Example: triploidy, there are 3 chromosomes in each set of chromosomes.
Define polysomy and give an example
Definition: only one set of chromosomes has an additional chromosome.
Example: trisomy 21, only chromosome 21 has 3 chromosomes.
What is fluorescence in situ hybridisation (FISH)
It’s a combination of karyotyping and hybridising techniques. It uses DNA probes labelled with fluorescent dyes to detect specific chromosomes/ chr regions using appropriate microscope.
FISH technique
- Fix chr on slides and treat to denature the dna to single strands.
- Prepare DNA probe
- Hybride fluorescently-labelled probes of interest to the DNA.
- Localize fluorescent signals against a background stain that binds to all the DNA sequences.
Different probes may be used in FISH.
- Gene-or locus-specific probes
- Repetitive DNA probes
- Whole chromosome probes
- fluorochromosomes.
Gene- or locus specific probes are used for
For presence, absence, location of particular gene.
Repetitive DNA probes used for
- Centromere repeats or telomere repeats
- To detect number of copies of particular chr
Whole chromosome probes are used for
- Chromosome painting
- Pool of fragments that covers entire chr/ chr arm
- Useful to detect chr rearrangements
What type of karyotyping Can evaluate complete karyote in single experiment or detect chr rearrangements in cancer cells, as well as different ploidy?
Spectral karyotyping (SKY)
Explain spectral karyotyping (SKY)
- 24 different chr-painting probes, one for each chr.
- Individual chr obtained by flow cytometry.
- Each chr labelled with specific combination of fluorescent dyes, to give unique fluore
- Signals analysed by computer, assigned a specific colour in order to generate photograph.
FISH pros
- Higher resolution
- Can use both inter- and metaphase cells
- Quick technique to detect abnormal chromosomes numbers.
- Many fluorochromes availed thus we can detect multiple probes at once/simultaneously.
FISH Cons
- Need prior information like the sequence of areas of interest
- Information gained is limited to design of probe
- Not general screening tool.
When studying the human genome what parts of the DNA were more focused on and what parts were less focused?
- Less focused on: The heterochromatin (tightly packed chromatin believed to be transcriptionally inactive) . Heterochromatin is believed to contain very few genes and non coding tandem repeats.
- More focused on: euchromatin( less tightly packed and transcriptionally active
Why do we still need to use karyotyping if there are more advanced methods to study chromosomes such as array CGH.
That is so because molecular genetic methods such as array CGH are not suited to detecting balanced chromosome rearrangements in which there is no net gain or loss of DNA. Inversions and balanced translocations would normally be invisible to these methods, but they can be detected by chromosome banding .
Chromosome FISH is used in what ways.
- Confirm regions of chromosome duplication or deletion.
- Screen for amplification of specific oncogenes.
- Used to detect recurring translocations that are often associated with cancer.
Single gene (monogenic) disorders
- Disorders determined by the alleles at a single locus.
- Characterised by specific patterns of transmission in families.
Recessive disorders
- Mostly due to loss-of-function mutation of a protein
- One functional allele expresses sufficient (50%) protein for normal physiological function.
Dominant disorders
- Manifest despite protein being expressed from normal allele.
- Can be pure dominance or incomplete dominance.
Explain pure dominance disorders .
Disorder is equally severe in AA and Aa (this is rarely the case for most dominant disorders)
Explain incomplete dominance disorders.
Disorder is more severe in AA than in Aa.