Karyotyping

Karyotyping is the simple process of seeing what a person’s chromosomes look like.

But don’t think of it as a chromosome beauty contest - karyotyping is actually used to detect chromosome number or structure abnormalities, in order to diagnose genetic disorders, like Down syndrome; or even some types of cancer, like leukemia.

Ok, now, chromosomes are found in the nucleus of our cells and they contain our DNA.

You can think of DNA like a library, with thousands of books called genes that carry recipes for how to make every single protein found in the cell.

In human somatic cells, so all cells besides the gametes; there are 23 pairs of homologous chromosomes, and in each pair, one chromosome came from each parent.

This adds up to 46 chromosomes in total.

Of these 23 pairs, 22 are somatic pairs, which contain genes that code for traits like hair color; and one sexual pair, which determines the biological sex of an individual.

In genetically female individuals, there are two X chromosomes, while in genetically male individuals, there’s an X and a Y chromosome.

However, chromosomes actually look different depending on the phases of the cell cycle - which is the series of events that somatic cells go through from the moment they’re formed until they divide into two identical daughter cells.

The cell cycle has two phases: interphase, when the cell prepares to divide, and mitosis, when the cell is dividing.

In early interphase, each chromosome has a single copy of the genetic information, called a chromatid, so there’s 46 chromosomes and 46 chromatids.

But in later interphase, as the cell prepares for mitosis, each chromosome is copied and pasted, so the amount of DNA, aka the number of chromatids, doubles up.

But two identical chromatids remain joined in a region called the centromere - so they still count as one chromosome.

So right before mitosis, there are 46 chromosomes and 92 chromatids.

This way, the two resulting daughter cells have 46 chromosomes and 46 chromatids each, so they have the same DNA as the original cell.

Ok, now karyotyping is actually done by snapping a picture of the chromosomes during mitosis - because that’s when they are at their most condensed, and they’re the most visible.