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Module Animals and plants supports karyotyping of any animal or plant species.
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Dedicated karyogram layouts and classifiers of the following species are included:
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Cattle
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Goat
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Mouse
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Pig
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Rat
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Ideograms, karyogram layouts and classifiers for other species can be simply specified by the user.
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The system enables to work with different chromosome descriptions.
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The number of chromosomes can be defined.
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Sex determination scheme can be selected:
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Drosophila - XX
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XY
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Abraxas - ww
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WZ
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Simple notation by either numbers or letters.
After the species definition, the automatically generated karyogram template shall be adjusted. The template editor allows for changing positions and alignment of each chromosome type. It is also possible to create additional positions for special purposes, such as markers or fragments.
Classifiers
The time required for karyotyping can be dramatically reduced by using a properly designed classifier. LUCIA Cytogenetics can classify banded chromosomes as well as the homogenously stained ones. The system automatically selects the classifier to be used to achieve the best classification results. In case of banded chromosomes the banding information is used as well as chromosome lengths. When working with non-banded chromosomes, morphologic features are used (e.g. size or shape). A teaching procedure on a big-enough series of images produces a well-working and reliable classifier.
Ideogram Editor
Ideogram sets which are not included in the installation can be created and added to the system by the user. The editor enables to define bands, their location and order and their properties (as density and label).
Since the ideograms hold important information about relative chromosome length and centromere position, so when there is no classifier defined for the current species, the ideograms are used for classification.