Developmental arrest at early stages of Chinese hamster embryos homozygous for chromosomal rearrangements

Forty-three Chinese hamster stocks with autosomal rearrangements produced by X-irradiation were used. These rearrangements, 38 reciprocal translocations and 5 inversions, were chromosomally balanced. Heterozygotes for these rearrangements were all fertile and morphologically normal in both sexes except for one line with growth retardation. By crossing male and female heterozygotes for the same rearrangements, homozygotes were obtained in 37 lines. In the remaining 6 lines (5 with reciprocal translocations and 1 with an inversion), no homozygotes were viable. These 6 lines revealed arrested development of homozygous embryos at the two-cell stage, around the eight-cell stage, and after implantation, respectively. The bands of the breakpoints of rearrangements associated with lethality of homozygous embryos were different for each rearrangement. These results suggest that abnormal expression including embryonic lethality in homozygotes may be due to an influence of genes at the breakpoints.