Relationships between satellite association and the occurrence of non-disjunction in man

It has been reported that there is an increased incidence of Down's syndrome among the children of parents who have been exposed to ionizing radiations for radiodiagnostic or radiotherapeutic reasons. Work with Drosophila, mice and human lymphocytes has shown that irradiation with X- or gamma-rays induces aneuploidy, presumably by non-disjunction. It has been suggested that in man the frequency of satellite association (s.a.) of acrocentric chromosomes may be involved in the causation of chromosomal non-disjunction. In the present work the effects of radiation on s.a. have, therefore, been investigated. The frequency of s.a. between acrocentric chromosomes was determined after the exposure of human blood from normal and chromosomally abnormal individuals to various small doses of Co-60 gamma-rays. The criteria of Zang and Back were used for the evaluation of s.a. complexes. No effects of radiation on the frequency of s.a. were apparent within the dose range investigated. The same result was obtained when s.a. was evaluated using the silver-staining technique in which physical connections between the associating satellites may be observed and the association complexes evaluated directly. The effects of other radiation sources have also been investigated.