Microarrays are now used as prenatal diagnostic tools to identify aneuploid fetuses in humans.
- Microarrays are now used as prenatal diagnostic tools to identify aneuploid fetuses in humans. Prospective parents also get to know the sex of their child if microarray profiling is performed. Give some thought to the potential for microarray-based verification of karyotypes in including and beyond the human species. Then indicate whether the sex of a fetus could be determined in the following species by this method. If so, for each case, should the microarray be hybridized to genomic DNA or cDNA? If either DNA or cDNA would be inappropriate, explain why.
- Chickens (sex is determined by ZW chromosomes)
- Snakes (sex is determined by alleles of a single gene)
- Agama lizards (sex is determined by the temperature at which eggs hatch)
- Twelve year old human suspected to be X0 (Turner’s syndrome)
