AGB 121: Principles of Animal Genetics and Population Genetics (2+1)

SKY TECHNIQUE

• Spectral karyotyping (SKY) is a laboratory technique that allows to visualize all pairs of chromosomes in an organism at one time, with each pair of chromosomes painted in a different fluorescent colour.

Uses

• For example, chromosomes in cancerous cells frequently exhibit aberrations called translocations, where a piece of one chromosome breaks off and attaches to the end of another chromosome.
• Identifying such chromosome abnormalities and determining their role in disease is an important step in developing new methods for diagnosing many genetic disorders