Effects of Chromosome Mis-segregation Intro

Aneuploidy is defined as the presence of an abnormal number of chromosomes in a cell. It does not however, include a difference of one or more complete sets of chromosomes which is defined as polyploidy. Aneuploidy has detrimental effects on the cell physiology, the integrity of the genome, and inflicts tremendous damage to DNA. For this reason, constitutional aneuploidy, or aneuploidy in every cell of an organism that originates from mis-segregation in germline cells is often lethal. One of the only exceptions in humans is trisomy of the 21^st chromosome, which leads to Down’s Syndrome. Although aneuploidy severely interferes with the physiology of the cell, aneuploidy and chromosome instability has been paradoxically shown to cause the formation of tumors.