Thank you for posting this for the perspective, and it seems like this kind of random curiosity could be a nice mundane reminder of the random beauty of life, but one never knows and perhaps someone will find a genetic variance someday that is really curious and leads to something great!
Re:The 44 Chromosome Man
by spottiness on Sunday July 03, 2011 @11:08AM
(#2723797)
Did your wife ever have a miscarriage? If not, I would guess it's very likely (>90%) that sperms with the chromosomes with the translocation can't fertilize an egg.
Wait so how could you have Children?
Yeah my oldest kid was slow to talk (fine now) so his pediatrician wanted to make sure there wasn't anything wrong, so his chromosomes were done (as well as Fragile X and all the other usual suspects). The report came back as normal chromosomes, so I can only assume he got my normal 5 and 16 (or that my wife was stepping out!!).
He has a normal 5 and a normal 16 as well as the modified versions.
My guess... The usual way. ;-)
He can still pass on the normal 5 & 16.
Incidentally, I discovered that I actually have a balanced whole arm translocation of chromosomes 5 and 16. That is I have one normal 5, one normal 16, and two abnormal chromosomes one with a 5p/16q and one with a 5q/16p. I only found it out when I rotated through a cytogenetics lab and we dropped our own chromosomes for grins. It's not a Robertsonian translocation (doesn't involved acrocentric chromosomes) but it's right through the centromeres of 5 and 16. Pretty weird, but as far as I can tell, totally asymptomatic. I'm a physician (and hobby-python guy) and have 4 completely normal kids.