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Science 31 October 2008:
Vol. 322. no. 5902, pp. 703 - 709
DOI: 10.1126/science.1160058
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Research Articles

Aneuploidy Affects Proliferation and Spontaneous Immortalization in Mammalian Cells

Bret R. Williams,1,2 Vineet R. Prabhu,1 Karen E. Hunter,1,2* Christina M. Glazier,1,2 Charles A. Whittaker,1 David E. Housman,1 Angelika Amon1,2{dagger}

Aneuploidy, an incorrect number of chromosomes, is the leading cause of miscarriages and mental retardation in humans and is a hallmark of cancer. We examined the effects of aneuploidy on primary mouse cells by generating a series of cell lines that carry an extra copy of one of four mouse chromosomes. In all four trisomic lines, proliferation was impaired and metabolic properties were altered. Immortalization, the acquisition of the ability to proliferate indefinitely, was also affected by the presence of an additional copy of certain chromosomes. Our data indicate that aneuploidy decreases not only organismal but also cellular fitness and elicits traits that are shared between different aneuploid cells.

1 David H. Koch Institute for Integrative Cancer Research, Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), Cambridge, MA 02139, USA.
2 Howard Hughes Medical Institute, MIT, E17-233, 40 Ames Street, Cambridge, MA 02139, USA.

* Present address: Gerstner Sloan-Kettering Graduate School of Biomedical Sciences, Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center, 1275 York Avenue, New York, NY 10065, USA.

{dagger} To whom correspondence should be addressed. E-mail: angelika{at}mit.edu

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