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From: emigh@ncsugn.ncsu.edu (Ted H. Emigh)
Newsgroups: sci.bio
Subject: Re: Karyotyping procedure
Message-ID: <6020@ncsugn.ncsu.edu>
Date: 9 Nov 90 19:23:28 GMT
References: <1567@beguine.UUCP>
Reply-To: emigh@ncsugn.UUCP (Ted H. Emigh)
Organization: North Carolina State University, Department of Genetics
Lines: 38

In article <1567@beguine.UUCP> joan@uncmed.med.unc.edu () writes:
>Hello folks.
>
>I need a karyotyping procedure applicable for a small undergraduate
>university genetics class.  The procedure should be relatively cheap to do
>and basic enough for undergraduates with limited experience to carry out.
>This information is for my undergraduate advisor.  Come on, this is your
>chance to help out a small rural college in the wilds of Maine!  Not to
>mention help college students find the joy in studying genetics.
>
>Thanks.
>
>Joan Shields
>UNC-CH

We include a human karyotyping lab in our Basic Genetics Lab.  While it is
not too difficult to do, you must be very careful of the ethical decisions
involved.  Our setup is easy, mainly because there are people on campus
who do this for a living, and we are able to use their containment areas.
We have a written protocol which I can send to anyone interested.

Now, on to some of the ethical problems:
1)	The best karyotyping is done with whole blood, preferably NOT pin
pricks.  There is a real possibility of the blood coming with HIV or hepatitis.
We are EXTREMELY careful of our handling of the blood.  The fixatives will
kill anything, so the completed slides are OK.  The drawn blood is tested for
HIV and hepatitis, but there is always a chance of a false negative.
2)	In the past, we had students karyotyping their own cells.  We have
stopped this.  We now use a single female and male -- both who have had
normal children.  The reason we stopped using student cells was the problem
of discovering students with nonnormal karyotypes -- XYY, balanced
translocations, XY females, etc.  We could not take the risk of a student
discovering her/his "abnormal" karyotype without the benefits of genetic
counseling.
3)	Local Human Subjects Committees may have restrictions which could
axe the experiment.

--Ted--