Abstract
Within certain Dipteran tissues chromatids replicate repeatedly without the occurrence of any mitosis-like events. This phenomenon — known as endoreplication — leads to the production of thousands of sister chromatids within the same nucleus resulting in more extended axial parts and a number of more contracted chromomeric loops of different size. The outcome are the so-called polytene (or giant) chromosomes, which appear as bundles of extended interphase chromatids characterised by peculiar banding patterns and by an axial length approximately 100–200 times the length of the same chromosomes during mitotic metaphase. Such chromosomes can easily be observed under a compound microscope (Figure 28.1).
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della Torre, A. (1997). Polytene chromosome preparation from anopheline mosquitoes . In: Crampton, J.M., Beard, C.B., Louis, C. (eds) The Molecular Biology of Insect Disease Vectors. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-009-1535-0_28
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-009-1535-0_28
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