Talk:Karyotype

More

More details about karyotyping and its use in finding diseases and such are welcome. Grandmasterka 09:50, 17 February 2006 (UTC)

Proposed merger from Chromosome banding

recursive link

Under the heading "Species trees", where the text says "The detailed study of chromosome banding ...", the 'chromosome banding' link leads back to this same page. I assume this was an oversight from the merger. This needs to be fixed to not be a recursive reference. Before you understand recursion, you must first understand recursion. 24.79.82.67 (talk) 18:49, 2 July 2012 (UTC)

voting

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• no,they merge. I think rather move spectral karyotype section from karyotype and just link from there to the main article, as they are two different whole subjects, even while it seems there isn't any content or someone to add or support any of them.

—Preceding unsigned comment added by Caue.cm.rego (talk • contribs)

Comment: What about putting Chromosome banding and the section on SKY technique in an article called Karyotype visualisation techniques? --apers0n 08:58, 12 October 2006 (UTC)

Seems to be a better solution. NCurse _work 14:54, 12 October 2006 (UTC)

On the contrary

No, not completely. You can have a splurge in there for SpecKaryotyping, but also have a main article on the subject, and link the two.

Halberdier25 23:29, 24 April 2006 (UTC)

Reverting history

I don't have any idea which is the correct version - the original version, or the version with the changes that 68.116.197.195 added. 212.219.232.85's changes clearly were vandalism, and only one of the two edits got fixed before 68.116.197.195's changes, which Samsara reverted. I'm assuming that Samsara knew what he or she was doing in removing the intermediate changes, and that, as a result, the proper version is the January 25 one. If that's true, then the most recent substantive contribution was Cohesion's Dec 31, 2006 edit.--Rkstafford 16:27, 12 February 2007 (UTC)

Revision

It says that R-Banding is the opposite of C-Banding but R-Banding is the opposite of G-Banding not C-Banding. I just learned about this in my Human Genetics class and asked my professor to ensure that I am correct. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 204.52.215.116 (talk) 17:44, 21 February 2007 (UTC).

Intro

I think it is a bad sign that the intro to this article never actually mentions the word "Karotype". It is very unfriendly to bio novices. Verkhovensky 04:59, 18 July 2007 (UTC)

It's an even worse sign that the article appears not to realise that karyotype = chromosome number! (+ form) I'll fix that plus ref. Macdonald-ross (talk) 18:21, 8 December 2007 (UTC)

Lack of biological perspective

The article depends almost exclusively on the example of human chromosomes, thus losing sight of the tremendous range of variation in the eukaryote kingdom. There is also an unhealthy emphasis on laboratory cytological techniques at the expense of a proper overview of the scientific issues which the techniques help to answer. In these respects the article is quite defective; the obsession with human genetics and lab techniques prevents a consideration of evolutionary questions, which is one of the main objectives of a biological approach. Macdonald-ross (talk) 18:32, 8 December 2007 (UTC)

Well, I think this is more or less fixed now. Macdonald-ross (talk) 12:09, 29 December 2007 (UTC)

"The basic number of chromosomes in the somatic cells of an individual or a species is called the somatic number and is designated 2n." Wording of the entire sentence seems a little strange. What is the "basic" number of chromosomes? The last part of the sentence is true for most mammals, but there are exceptions (e.g., Tympanoctomys barrerae). Taking plants into consideration, there are many polyploid exceptions (plants have somatic cells, too). Karyotypes would include all chromosomes present -- all copies in the cell.

"In the germ-line (the sex cells) the chromosome number is n (humans: n = 23)." Same comment here; germ cells are generally half the ploidy of the somatic cells, not necessarily n.98.156.57.22 (talk) 03:53, 12 July 2013 (UTC)Kate

Jargon in lead section

I believe there is too much jargon in the lead section.

The section does not make it clear which "characteristic chromosome complement" it means (out of the four different meanings in the disambiguation page for complement). And precisely what do you mean by characteristic? The last word in the second sentence could mean an individual person or organism, an individual chromosome, etc. I am not a biologist and I was left with the impression that the lead paragraph had not fully defined (for laymen) what a karyotype is.

The next two paragraphs seem to be trying to describe why a karyotype is important. But:

• Why is the definition of 2n and n important to karyotype?
• Does karyotype only apply to diploid organisms?
• Why all the talk about polyploid and haploid cells?
• What is the relationship between karyotype and karyology? Between karyotype and karyograms? In effect, are karyotype, karyology and karyograms synonyns? If not, what is the difference?

When the section says "Karyotypes can be used for many purposes..." in the fourth paragraph, does it really mean: Karyograms can be used for many purposes...? I guess I still don't have the meaning of karyotype fixed in my mind: Is karyotype a conceptual term, some facet of a karyogram, some speciality of karyology or what?

This is just a layman's criticism of the lead. Hope you can use it. --RoyGoldsmith (talk) 14:40, 11 March 2010 (UTC)

OK, thanks for your comments. I'll be considering your points. First of all, this is a highly technical science, and pages, which are of strictly of limited length, simply cannot explain everything from scratch. Science terms are all interconnected, and WP pages depend on readers being prepared to follow links to clarify problems. Second, a contributor must conform to the standard literature of the subject. The definitions at the start did so. All the same, I have made some changes. I need to deal with your other questions a bit later. Macdonald-ross (talk) 21:09, 11 March 2010 (UTC)

It's good to talk to you. Although your subject may be technical, we are contributing to a general encyclopedia. We should not conform to the standard terminology in peer-reviewed scientific papers on the subject. Articles must be understandable to the general public.

For example, the article on topology defines its subject in the first sentence: "Topology ... is a major area of mathematics concerned with spatial properties that are preserved under continuous deformations of objects, for example, deformations that involve stretching, but no tearing or gluing." The example shows the general concept of the type of deformations that are allowed and the link provides more information for those that are interested.

Wikipedia's Manual of Style guidelines say that the lead section should be accessible to as many readers as possible. This is a direct quote from that guideline: "In general, specialized terminology and symbols should be avoided in an introduction. ... Where uncommon terms are essential to describing the subject, they should be placed in context, briefly defined, and linked. The subject should be placed in a context with which many readers could be expected to be familiar."

To get down to cases, I still do not understand your definition of karyotype, even with your footnote. You say: "A karyotype is the characteristic chromosome complement of an eukaryote species". If "complement" merely means the number and arrangement of chromosomes (like the complement of a ship, as opposed to any of the scientific meanings) then wouldn't the definition be better worded as "A karyotype is the usual number and arrangement of chromosomes of a species that has a cell nucleus, often expressed in a diagram known as a karyogram." If karyograms can be drawn up for unusual numbers of chromosomes, like say, for a man with XYY syndrome, then the word "usual" (meaning characteristic) should be dropped from the definition.

If you like, perhaps you could explain the lead section to me on this talk page, using as many examples and analogies as needed. Then we can both come up with an acceptable definition. (Your worry about article space can always be taken care of in subarticles (see WP:SS) but the Karyotype article, at 33 kbytes, is way below the suggested maximums.) --RoyGoldsmith (talk) 14:20, 13 March 2010 (UTC)

Well, I agree with your aim, and have revised the first para again. For topics which are not directly the subject of this article readers must still use the links. The sections Observations and Diversity illustrate how varied and variable karyotypes are throughout eukaryotes, in comparison with the basic genetic apparatus of DNA/RNA. Why that should be is poorly understood, but it does give the study of karyotypes its own distinct value. Macdonald-ross (talk) 10:38, 15 March 2010 (UTC)

Much, much better. If you have followed the same methodology in the other sections, I would think you could apply to have the article's class lifted from C-class to B-class. Good work.

The second point to be included in the first lead paragraph is the subject's notability; that is, why karyotypes are worthy enough to have its own article in Wikipedia. You could simply add a sentence to the fisrt paragraph starting with "Karyotypes are important because...".

I would also do some work on the organization of my chapter headings. For example, the History of karyotype studies should normally come first and you should not have a subsection titled "Overview" last in a section. Also, in general, you should not have links inside the section heading: in place of "Ploidy: the number of sets in a karyotype" you might have "Ploidy" alone as the heading and then, as the first sentence "Ploidy is the number of complete sets of chromosomes in a biological cell."

I know this seems terribly clerical but it's part of the style of Wikipedia that makes all articles readable at first glance. I hope these suggestions will be taken in the spirit they are offered: that of a sincere hope to improve Wikipedia. --RoyGoldsmith (talk) 13:09, 15 March 2010 (UTC)

Bad Redirect

Hello, Currently typing in idiogram will redirect you here, with no disambiguation page option The redirect is bad, idiogram is used to describe a chinese character or similar. IluvSD40s (talk) 23:46, 25 September 2011 (UTC)

Quite possibly. You can fix it yourself by editing the redirect page. When you arrive via a redirect a little back-link in blue takes you to the redirect page. You can then edit it to make it a disambiguation page. Personally, I would have no objection to this. Thank you for raising it; next time put new talk at the end of the page. Regards, Macdonald-ross (talk) 12:51, 26 September 2011 (UTC)

Fusion or translocation

The article says: "Differences in basic number of chromosomes may occur due to successive unequal translocations... Humans have one pair fewer chromosomes than the great apes, but the genes have been mostly translocated (added) to other chromosomes.

My question is: Is the origin of human chromosome 2 a (Robertsonian) fusión of two apes' chomosomes or a translocation to other chromosomes? And also: Is it an example of aneuploidy as it is stated in the chapter "Aneuploidy"? I think aneuploidy generally affects to one of the chromosomes of the diploid set of chromosomes without lossing both members of the pair (one remains) or, in other cases of aneuploidy, the number is increased.--Miguelferig (talk) 18:21, 20 April 2012 (UTC)

I hope it is now crystal clear: see end of History section. Macdonald-ross (talk) 11:12, 18 June 2012 (UTC)

Human Karyotype section Suggestion

The text currently reads: "Any variation from the standard karyotype may lead to developmental abnormalities." The XYY syndrome article sugests that XYY does not cause disability. The chart at [[1]] considers XYY as a normal male phenotype. How should this article be revised? Include 47,XYY in the list of normal human karyotypes, or change the text to "Almost any variation..." --Theodore Kloba (talk) 19:39, 13 November 2015 (UTC)

"Complete set of chromosomes..." but otherwise illustrated

Karyogram is defined as an image of the complete set of chromosomes but in the image in the article we don't see complete chromosomes but just one chromatid of each chromosome. We can fix this in two ways:

• We should see 46 chromosomes, each containing two sister chromatids. But I couldn't find such an image in Commons.
• We should explain that often the sister chromatids are left out because they are identical and don't give us any additional info.

I'll add the explanation but it would be nice if someone can find/create a truly complete set of chromosomes because it's perplexing right now. Exonie (talk) 16:38, 27 September 2022 (UTC)