Jumping translocations are common in solid tumor cell lines and result in recurrent fusions of whole chromosome arms.

Jumping translocations (JTs) and segmental jumping translocations (SJTs) are unbalanced translocations involving a donor chromosome arm or chromosome segment that has fused to multiple recipient chromosomes. In leukemia, where JTs have been predominantly observed, the donor segment (usually 1q) preferentially fuses to the telomere regions of recipient chromosomes. In this study, spectral karyotyping (SKY) and FISH analysis revealed 188 JTs and SJTs in 10 cell lines derived from carcinomas of the bladder, prostate, breast, cervix, and pancreas. Multiple JTs and SJTs were detected in each cell line and contributed to recurrent unbalanced whole-arm translocations involving chromosome arms 5p, 14q, 15q, 20q, and 21q. Sixty percent (113/188) of JT breakpoints occurred within centromere or pericentromeric regions of the recipient chromosomes, whereas only 12% of the breakpoints were located in the telomere regions. JT breakpoints of both donor and recipient chromosomes coincided with numerous fragile sites as well as viral integration sites for human DNA viruses. The JTs within each tumor cell line promoted clonal progression, leading to the acquisition of extra copies of the donated chromosome segments that often contained oncogenes (MYC, ABL, HER2/NEU, etc.), consequently resulting in tumor-specific genomic imbalances. Published 2001 Wiley-Liss, Inc.