Published online by Cambridge University Press: 14 April 2009
When T6/+ female mice were mated to non-translocation-bearing males, the relative viability of the embryos at 13·5–14·5 days gestation was about 39%. About 36% of the oocytes ovulated by T6/+ females were aneuploid, as a result of non-disjunction at meiosis, the majority having either 19 or 21 chromosomes. However, aneuploidy only accounts for a proportion of the embryonic loss in T6/+ × +/+ matings, as many of the embryos with 41 chromosomes survive postnatally. The present findings indicate that approximately 50% of the oocytes ovulated with the normal haploid number of chromosomes (n = 20) were genetically unbalanced as a result of adjacent segregation, and that a high proportion of the resultant embryos die in the early postimplantation period. In the present study non-translocation-bearing mice which were genotypically similar to the T6/+ females acted as controls.