STUDIES ON THE CHROMOSOME OF MINK (MUSTELA VISION)

The chromosomes of mink (Mustela vision) had been studied by several banding techniques (C-banding,silver staining and late replication banding). The results are giv-en as below:The diploid number of the mink is 30. Autosomes consist of 5 pairs of meta-centrics, 8 pairs of submetacentrics and 1 pair of acrocentrics. Chromosome No. 8 has a clear secondary constriction on the short arm. X chromosome is a metacentric and its size is almost as the same as Chromosome No. 11.The C-bands of the mink chromosomes are mainly restricted to the centromeric re-gions. Chromosomes Nos. 2, 3, 4, 7 and 8 have large C-bands, extending from the cen-tromere to both arms. The heterochromatin of X chromosome is more abundant than that of autosomes. But the C-band of centromere region of chromosome No. 5 is small and stained slightly.There are three Ag-NORs in the silver-stained karyotype, one pair of them are 1o-cated at the secondary constriction of chromosome No. 8, the other one is located at the long arm of chromosome No. 2, which is only one chromosome with A8-NORs.