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Uniparental Disomy Research Paper

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Uniparental disomy is when both members of a chromosome pair comes from one parent, while the chromosome from the other parent is lost. During anaphase in meiosis II, the chromosomes fail to split properly, which will cause two abnormal daughter cells. This is termed the anaphase lag where a gamete will end up with 47 chromosomes instead of 46 (Shaffer et al. 2001). Usually what will happen during meiosis is that one diploid cell will form two haploid daughter cells, and then those two daughter cells will form two more haploid daughter cells. This makes four haploid daughter cells at the end of meiosis. Sometimes a mutation will occur where a daughter cell produced in meiosis will have either three copies or one single copy of a chromosome …show more content…

This process is called a trisomic rescue. During a trisomic rescue, any one of the chromosomes can be discarded. Since there are two chromosomes from the same parent and one from the other parent, there is a greater chance of the chromosome from the other parent being kicked out. However, studies have shown that there is a 50% chance that the loss of the extra chromosome will cause UPD (Shaffer et al. 2001). This means that the other chance is that the loss of the extra chromosome will not cause UPD. Just like trisomy gametes, monosomy gametes can fix the situation that they are in by duplicating the lone chromosome to make two identical chromosomes. This process is rarer than trisomic rescue, and usually found to happen in paternal UPD. Trisomic rescue tends to happen more in cases with meiotic errors, and monsomic rescue will usually happen more in cases with mitotic errors. However, there are instances where trisomic rescues will happen in mitosis, and monosomic rescues will happen in meiosis (Voss et al. 1989). When the trisomic and monosomic rescues happen early in the post-zygotic divisions, the abnormal daughter cells will be fixed and free from mutation. However, if the rescues happen a little later on in the post-zygotic divisions, and abnormality will most likely appear (Shaffer et al. 2001). Along with trisomy and monosomy, there are two other ways that UPD …show more content…

This means that one will contain one or more copies of the same chromosome, or disomic, and the other one will be lacking one of the normal chromosome pairs, or nullisomic (NCMG 2003). The nullisomic gamete lacks substantial elements from the chromosomes, which causes it to eventually die. The other way uniparental disomy can happen is by post fertilization error. This process happens in mitosis, and is a little similar to monosomic rescue. During mitosis there is a loss of one member of a chromosome pair. The remaining member of the chromosome pair is reduplicated to take the place of the one that was lost (NCMG 2003). These mechanisms that cause uniparental disomy to occur tend to cause severe syndromes and disease, but not

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