Preparation of Samples for Comparative Studies of Arthropod Chromosomes: Visualization, In Situ Hybridization, and Genome Size Estimation

The ability to obtain large amounts of genomic sequence for organisms and high throughput technology has led to a change in the thrust of research at the level of chromosomes in animals. In the past chromosomal analysis of animals was focused on gross changes such as inversions, translocations, and deletions for both genetic and evolutionary studies. The advent of in situ hybridization technology and the ability to measure genome content size changed both the precision and the scale of studies addressing chromosomal change as a tool in evolutionary biology. This chapter addresses two of the major areas of change that have occurred in chromosomal studies in the past decade - examination of more refined and genome enabled structural changes in chromosomes and genome size measure. This cahpter describes some of the chromosome structure approaches such as fluorescent in situ hybridization (FISH), comparative genomic hybridization (CGH) and other techniques. As well, advances in Genome size measurement and theory are described herein.