1/41. angelman syndrome with uniparental disomy due to paternal meiosis II nondisjunction.We report a case of angelman syndrome (AS) with paternal uniparental disomy (pUPD) of chromosome 15. This 6-year-old girl with overgrowth had frequent, but only provoked laughter, was mildly ataxic with limb hypertonia, and had no intelligible speech. She had deep-set eyes, protruding tongue, and prominent chin. The karyotype was normal. dna analysis with microsatellites from chromosome 15 showed no inheritance of maternal alleles both within and outside the AS critical region. Proximal markers showed reduction to homozygosity of paternal alleles, intermediate markers showed nonreduction, and distal markers reduction, thus suggesting a meiosis II nondisjunction event in the father with two crossovers. This is, to our knowledge, the first reported case of AS due to meiosis II nondisjunction. We present detailed physical measurements in this patient, adding to the clinical description of the milder phenotype in AS due to pUPD.- - - - - - - - - - ranking = 1keywords = chromosome (Clic here for more details about this article) |
2/41. Maternal uniparental disomy for chromosome 14 in a boy with a normal karyotype.We report on a boy with a maternal uniparental disomy for chromosome 14 (UPD(14)). At 7 years of age he was referred to us by the paediatrician because of symptoms of prader-willi syndrome (PWS). He showed short stature, obesity, mild developmental delay, cryptorchidism, and some mild dysmorphic features. The history further indicated intrauterine growth retardation at the end of the pregnancy. His mother was 44 years of age at the time of his birth. After birth he showed hypotonia with poor sucking, for which gavage feeding was needed. Motor development was delayed. After 1 year he became obese despite a normal appetite. Recurrent middle ear infections, a high pain threshold, and a great skill with jigsaw puzzles were reported. There were no behavioural problems or sleep disturbance. Chromosomal analysis was normal (46,XY). dna analysis for prader-willi syndrome showed no abnormalities. Two years later he was re-examined because we thought his features fitted the PWS-like phenotype associated with maternal UPD(14). At that time precocious puberty was evident. dna analysis showed maternal heterodisomy for chromosome 14. In all the previously described 11 cases with maternal UPD(14), a Robertsonian translocation involving chromosome 14 was detected cytogenetically before dna analysis. This is the first report of diagnosis of maternal UPD(14) based on clinical features. This finding underlines the importance of dna analysis for maternal UPD(14) in patients with a similar PWS-like phenotype even without previous identification of a Robertsonian translocation involving chromosome 14.- - - - - - - - - - ranking = 4keywords = chromosome (Clic here for more details about this article) |
3/41. Meiotic behaviour of the sex chromosomes in three patients with sex chromosome anomalies (47,XXY, mosaic 46,XY/47,XXY and 47,XYY) assessed by fluorescence in-situ hybridization.Meiotic studies using multicolour fluorescent in-situ hybridization (FISH) and chromosome painting were carried out in three patients with sex chromosome anomalies (47,XXY; 46,XY/47,XXY and 47,XYY). In the two patients with klinefelter syndrome, although variable percentages of XXY cells (88.5 and 28.3%) could be found in the pre-meiotic stages, none of the abnormal cells entered meiosis, and all pachytenes were XY. However, the abnormal testicular environment of these patients probably resulted in meiotic I non-disjunction, and a certain proportion of post-reductional cells were XY (18.3 and 1.7%). The fact that none of the spermatozoa were XY also suggests the existence of an arrest at the secondary spermatocyte or the spermatid level. In the XYY patient, most (95.9%) premeiotic cells were XYY. The percentage of XYY pachytenes was 57.9%. The sex chromosomes were either in close proximity (XYY) or the X chromosome was separated from the two Ys (X YY). A high proportion (42.1%) of post-reductional germ cells were XY. However, only 0.11% of spermatozoa were disomic for the sex chromosomes. In this case, the data suggest the existence of an arrest of the abnormal cells at the primary and the secondary spermatocyte or the spermatid level, giving rise to the continuous elimination of abnormal cells in the germ-cell line along spermatogenesis. The fact that the proportion of diploid spermatozoa was only increased in one of the three cases (XXY) is also suggestive of an arrest of the abnormal cell lines in these patients. The two apparently non-mosaic patients were, in fact, germ-cell mosaics. This suggests that the cytogenetic criteria used to define non-mosaic patients may be inadequate; thus, the risk of intracytoplasmic sperm injection in apparently non-mosaics may be lower than expected.- - - - - - - - - - ranking = 6.5keywords = chromosome (Clic here for more details about this article) |
4/41. Meiotic origin of trisomy in neoplasms: evidence in a case of erythroleukaemia.Trisomic cells in neoplasms may represent abnormal clones originated from a tissue-confined mosaicism, and arise therefore by a meiotic error. We report on a 16-month-old child with erythroleukaemia (AML-M6), whose marrow karyotype at onset was 48,XX,del(13)(q12q14),del(14)(q22q32), 21, 21. The parental origin of the supernumerary chromosomes 21 was investigated by comparing 10 polymorphic loci scattered along the whole chromosome on the patient's marrow and her parents' leukocytes. Three loci were informative for the presence of three alleles, two of which were of maternal origin; two further loci showed a maternal allele of higher intensity. lymphocytes and skin fibroblasts showed a normal karyotype, and molecular analysis on leukocytes at remission, buccal smear and urinary sediment cells consistently showed only one maternal allele, whereas neonatal blood from Guthrie spot showed two maternal alleles as in the marrow. An accurate clinical re-evaluation confirmed a normal phenotype. Our results indicate that tetrasomy 21 arose from a marrow clone with trisomy 21 of meiotic origin. To the best of our knowledge, this is the first evidence that supernumerary chromosomes in neoplastic clones may in fact be present due to a meiotic error. This demonstrates that a tissue-confined constitutional mosaicism for a trisomy may indeed represent the first event in multistep carcinogenesis.- - - - - - - - - - ranking = 1.5keywords = chromosome (Clic here for more details about this article) |
5/41. Premature chromosome condensation in humans associated with microcephaly and mental retardation: a novel autosomal recessive condition.We report a novel autosomal recessive disorder characterized by premature chromosome condensation in the early g2 phase. It was observed in two siblings, from consanguineous parents, affected with microcephaly, growth retardation, and severe mental retardation. Chromosome analysis showed a high frequency of prophase-like cells (>10%) in lymphocytes, fibroblasts, and lymphoblast cell lines with an otherwise normal karyotype. (3)H-thymidine-pulse labeling and autoradiography showed that, 2 h after the pulse, 28%-35% of the prophases were labeled, compared with 9%-11% in healthy control subjects, indicating that the phenomenon is due to premature chromosome condensation. flow cytometry studies demonstrate that the entire cell cycle is not prolonged, compared with that in healthy control subjects, and compartment sizes did not differ from those in healthy control subjects. No increased reaction of the cells to X-irradiation or treatments with the clastogens bleomycin and mitomycin C was observed, in contrast to results in the cell-cycle mutants ataxia telangiectasia and fanconi anemia. The rates of sister chromatid exchanges and the mitotic nondisjunction rates were inconspicuous. Premature entry of cells into mitosis suggests that a gene involved in cell-cycle regulation is mutated in these siblings.- - - - - - - - - - ranking = 3keywords = chromosome (Clic here for more details about this article) |
6/41. Concurrence of fragile X and Klinefelter syndromes: report of a new case of paternal nondisjunction.The concurrence of fragile X and Klinefelter syndromes would be expected occasionally. Therefore, the analysis of the literature showed that the concurrence of both conditions was found at least 16 times. Among them, only seven cases were analyzed for the parental origin of the extra chromosome X, suggesting that the maternal nondisjunction was preferentially inherited. We present the third patient with the concurrence of fragile X and Klinefelter syndromes, in which the parental origin of the supernumerary chromosome X was paternal. This finding reinforces that the parent-of-origin predisposition of the concurrence of the fragile X and Klinefelter syndromes is a pure coincidence.- - - - - - - - - - ranking = 1keywords = chromosome (Clic here for more details about this article) |
7/41. Uniparental isodisomy due to duplication of chromosome 21 occurring in somatic cells monosomic for chromosome 21.uniparental disomy has been recently recognized as an important phenomenon in non-Mendelian inheritance of human genetic disorders. Several mechanisms for uniparental disomy, i.e., the presence of two homologous chromosomes derived from one parent, have been proposed. We studied two independent cases of abnormalities of chromosome 21 in which there were abnormal karyotypes at birth but blood cells with normal karyotype predominated later in life, and the cells with abnormalities disappeared. Uniparental isodisomy was observed in the normal cells in these individuals. The uniparental disomy in these families was the result of duplication of a chromosome in mitosis after the loss of the homologous abnormal chromosome. The duplication can be seen as mechanism for cell survival and is called here "compensatory" isodisomy, which provided a selective advantage for the cell population with the normal number of chromosomes 21.- - - - - - - - - - ranking = 6.5keywords = chromosome (Clic here for more details about this article) |
8/41. A 47,XXY female with unusual genitalia.A 47,XXY karyotype was found in a 6-year-old girl. The patient had female external genitalia, clitoromegaly, remnants of the ductus mesonephricus, uterus, and gonads in the labia majora which were determined to be testes by histology. Cytogenetic and dna analyses suggest that the y chromosome had a normal structure and that both X chromosomes were of maternal origin. The unusual clinical findings in the patient are discussed.- - - - - - - - - - ranking = 1keywords = chromosome (Clic here for more details about this article) |
9/41. Recurrent trisomy 21: four cases in three generations.Recurrent trisomy 21: four cases in three generations.While gonadal mosaicism can lead to recurrence of trisomy 21 (T21) for a single couple, the recurrence of free T21 in multiple members of a single pedigree has rarely been reported. We present an unusual pedigree with four cases of down syndrome (DS) with free T21 were born to four separate women related through three generations of one family. The mothers were aged 18, 21, 29, and approximately 30 years at the time of the births. Using microsatellite markers, we excluded most of chromosome 21, excepting two small regions within 21q11.1 and 21q22.3, as being shared among the mothers of the DS children. However, two members of the pedigree, including one DS mother with a normal G-banded karyotype, carried supernumerary alleles at markers 2503J9TG, D21S369, and D21S215, which span the region from 21pter to 21q11.1. fluorescence in situ hybridization using a centromeric probe hybridizing to chromosomes 13 and 21 did not reveal a novel location, ruling out a cryptic centromeric translocation between chromosome 21 and any chromosome other than chromosome 13. The level of meiotic recombination on chromosome 21 was unusually high in this family as well. We hypothesize that a cryptic rearrangement within the highly repetitive region of 21q11.1 is present in this family, disrupting pairing and leading to an increased risk of non-disjunction of chromosome 21 in this family.- - - - - - - - - - ranking = 3.5keywords = chromosome (Clic here for more details about this article) |
10/41. Parental origin and mechanism of formation of polysomy X: an XXXXX case and four XXXXY cases determined with RFLPs.The parental origin and mechanism of formation of polysomy X were studied in five cases (one case of 49,XXXXX; four cases of 49,XXXXY), using various X-linked restriction fragment length polymorphisms as genetic markers. Segregation and densitometric analyses on the polymorphic dna fragments revealed that, in all five cases, the additional X chromosomes are of maternal origin and the mechanism of formation is most probably a result of three non-disjunctions during maternal meiotic divisions: once at the first meiosis and simultaneously twice at the second meiosis. The identical origin and the identical mechanism of formation among the five cases are unlikely to be coincidental and suggest a common cause in the mothers of the five cases.- - - - - - - - - - ranking = 0.5keywords = chromosome (Clic here for more details about this article) |
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