Credit: Image courtesy of Dr. Anna Jauch, Institute of Human Genetics in Heidelberg, Germany.
The chromosomes were isolated from a cell taken from a patient with Werner Syndrome, a premature aging disease that is caused by the loss of the WRN gene. Painting each chromosome pair in a different color reveals the breakage and fusion of chromosomes (see chromosomes 6 and 10), which causes genomic instability and could explain the high incidence of cancer among individuals with Werner syndrome.