Factors predisposing to adjacent 2 and 3:1 disjunctions: study of 161 human reciprocal translocations.

Reciprocal translocations produce imbalances by three types of disjunction which are, in decreasing frequency, adjacent 1, 3:1, and adjacent 2. Adjacent 1 disjunction produces duplication deficiencies of inverse topography to those of adjacent 2. The imbalanced chromosome segments in one of these types are balanced in the other. The disjunction 3:1 produces pure trisomies and monosomies. The following situations predispose to adjacent 2 disjunction: translocations between the long arms of two acrocentric chromosomes or between one of these and that of a No 9 chromosome; centric segments, either short or carrying a heterochromatic zone (9qh); a balanced translocation in the mother. The factors predisposing to the disjunction adjacent 2 operate by selection, or directly on the meiotic configuration. Some of them (shortness of the interstitial segment, shortness of the short arms of translocation chromosomes) act in both these ways. Their influence is probably responsible for the repetitive and exclusive character of this disjunction. The conditions for the occurrence of the 3:1 disjunctions seem less strict than those for adjacent 2, although they should be of the same nature (involvement of acrocentrics or a chromosome 9 in the translocation, maternal origin).