Protocol for Karyotyping of Toad chromosomes Needed! - (Oct/05/2006 )

Hello everybody,

I am a research student from the Central Indian region (Asia). I am working towards the conservation of toad species in my region. Due to repeated stress overtime, many toad species have died out from our region and only two of them are left today. I wanted to carry out karyotyping of these two toads for a qualitative analysis of their evolutionary status and conservation strategies.
I am not able to find a proper and simple procedure for effective general as well as banding staining of these chromosomes and their karyotyping. I am also not able to find a proper software for their karyotyping.
Kindly help me out in my effort. Kindly provide me with a free-downloadable software for the same (if possible) as well as a properly referenced/cited research paper/protocol for their effective karyotyping.

Thank you.

A. D. Garg, India

More than likely these species won't have been karyotyped before so there won't be reference karyotypes available.
The ability to recognise and karyotype chromosomes of any species must be learned. There is no software available that accurately analyses banded chromosomes although image analysis systems are available that help automate the karyotyping of human chromosomes (and mouse if I recall correctly).
My advice would be to get in touch with a University Lab involved in non-human (animal) karyotyping, or if there isn't one available, try a diagnostic human cytogenetics lab that is willing to teach you some basic skills. You will need skills in tissue culture, chromosome harvesting and banding techniques and basic chromosome analysis (microscopy) skills.
Ideally this is a project for someone who already has training in cytogenetics or can be supervised by somebody who has this training.
Good luck.