rDNA levels in infertile male carriers of Robertsonian translocations

This is the authors' abstract. We don't add key points for this paper.

The amount of ribosomal DNA in 12 infertile male carriers of Robertsonian translocations and in some of their fertile relatives with the same translocation or with a normal karyotype was determined by RNA/DNA hybridization. This was done to test the hypothesis that infertility results from the loss of ribosomal cistrons at the chromosome breaks and mendelian segregation of the remaining acrocentrics such that these subjects do not have threshold amount of rDNA. The mean saturation value for the infertile patients (0.0258%) was similar to that of the fertile carriers of the translocation (0.0262%) and of the relatives with a normal karyotype (0.0277%). The data do not support this hypothesis.