It has come to our attention that approximately 35% of >100 published microarray datasets, where transcript levels were compared between two different strains, exhibit some form of chromosome-specific bias. While some of these arose from the use of strains whose aneuploidies were not known at the time, in a worrisome number of cases the recombinant strains have acquired additional aneuploidies ...

BACKGROUND Chromosomal aneuploidies are a common cause of congenital disorders associated with cognitive impairment and multiple dysmorphic features. Pre-natal diagnosis of aneuploidies is most commonly performed by the karyotyping of fetal cells obtained by amniocentesis or chorionic villus sampling, but this method is labour intensive and requires about 14 days to complete. METHODS We have ...

The aim of this study was use a simple and rapid procedure, called segmental duplication quantitative fluorescent polymerase chain reaction (SD-QF-PCR), for the prenatal diagnosis of fetal chromosomal aneuploidies. This method is based on the co-amplification of segmental duplications located on two different chromosomes using a single pair of fluorescent primers. The PCR products of different ...

Approximately 10-15% of all pregnancies end in spontaneous abortions. Many factors can lead to embryonic loss; however, it has been well established that over 50% of all miscarriages result from chromosomal abnormalities, primarily aneuploidies (>96%). Identifying the cause of miscarriage can significantly reduce the psychological stress in women, and enable better genetic counseling for a futu...

Abnormalities of chromosome copy number are called aneuploidies and make up a large health load on the human population. Many aneuploidies are lethal because the resulting abnormal gene dosage is highly deleterious. Nevertheless, some whole chromosome aneuploidies can lead to live births. Alterations in the copy number of sections of chromosomes, which are also known as segmental aneuploidies, ...

Effective screening for major aneuploidies can be provided in the first trimester of pregnancy. Screening by a combination of fetal nuchal translucency and maternal serum free-β-human chorionic gonadotrophin and pregnancy-associated plasma protein-A can identify about 90% of fetuses with trisomy 21 and other major aneuploidies for a false-positive rate of 5%. Improvement in the performance of f...

National guidelines recommend that all pregnant women be offered screening for fetal chromosomal abnormalities, the majority of which are aneuploidies (an abnormal number of chromosomes). The trisomy syndromes are aneuploidies involving 3 copies of 1 chromosome. Trisomies 21 (T21), 18 (T18), and 13 (T13) are the most common forms of fetal aneuploidy that survive to birth. Noninvasive prenatal s...

Genetic aberrations are commonly seen in human preimplantation embryos. Non-disjunction and premature division of a chromosome are common in both meiosis and mitosis divisions. The expected result for meiotic aneuploidies is full aneuploidy in the later stages whereas mosaicism is the most frequent event in the cleavage and blastocyst stages. The main causes for mosaicism are post-zygotic event...

Previously, a relationship has been found between diminished cellular maturity of human spermatozoa and low-level expression of the testis-specific chaperone protein, HspA2. Because HspA2 is a component of the synaptonemal complex in rodents, and assuming that this is also the case in men, it was postulated that the frequency of chromosomal aneuploidies would be higher in immature versus mature...