Reddit reviews Gardner and Sutherland's Chromosome Abnormalities and Genetic Counseling (Oxford Monographs on Medical Genetics)

Hi there.

1. In clinical practice, I usually use this book to see if there is any information about the particular translocation (some more common ones, such as Robertsonians, have a lot of info). I also take a look at the medical literature, but unfortunately for a lot of cases this information isn't available, which I wish it was.
   
2. Oof, yes, it is complex. What you learn in high school is genetic material duplicates, chromosomes line up in a neat little line, cell division happens, then it happens again and you are left with an egg or sperm with 23 chromosomes. But then when you start thinking that the DNA needs to get tightly wrapped up to make the chromosomes, that protein machinery made up of 10s if not 100s of proteins (all from genes themselves) duplicates the DNA, that that neat little line is actually a bunch of proteins as well, and that cell division has to be carefully orchestrated and that sometimes chromosomes don't separate properly, it can get very complicated and there are tons of opportunities just for that to not work properly before we even get to fertilization or embryo development.