Induction of Folate Sensitive Chromosomal Fragile Sites by Fudr in Pakistani Lohi Sheep (Ovis aries)

An investigation to determine frequency and distribution of folate sensitive chromosomal fragile sites was carried out in a Pakistani breed of Lohi sheep to uncover fragile site phenomena. The means and standard errors of aberrant cell count (AC) and Number of aberrations (NoA) in Lohi sheep were $0.56{\pm}0.15$ and $0.59{\pm}0.16$ in the control cultures. FUdR treated cells showed significantly higher (p<0.001) AC and NoA means ($2.18{\pm}0.33$ and $2.65{\pm}0.50$). The sex comparison for the frequency of expression indicated that males had significantly higher number of aberrant cells and total number of aberrations in FUdR cultures than the female group in Lohi sheep. The comparison of control cultures was however, not significantly different between the two groups. The regression analysis of FUdR-induced chromosomal fragility data analysis of the fragility data predicted very low ${\beta}$ of 0.325 and 0.412 for AC and NoA respectively. Lohi chromosomes expressed lesions in only 7 and 24 bands in the control and FUdR cultures respectively. The total number of significantly fragile bands in the Lohi genome was only 4. The X-chromosome of the Lohi sheep was highly stable at $5{\mu}g/ml$ FUdR with no fragile sites. The sex comparison for the distribution of fragile sites across the Lohi genome did not reveal any noticeable differences.