Breakage-fusion-bridge cycle

The chromosome bridge formation could trigger a mutational cascade through the accumulation of chromothripsis in each cell division.

[6] Breakage-fusion-bridge creates several identifiable cytogenetic abnormalities, such as anaphase bridges and dicentric chromosomes, which can be seen in progress using methods that have been available for decades.

[2] More recent methods, such as microarray hybridization and sequencing technologies, allow to infer evidence of BFB after the process has ceased.

Fold-back inversions are chimeric sequences that span head-to-head arrangements of inverted tandem-duplicated segments, and are expected to appear in BFB modified genomes.

[14] While other genome instability mechanisms may also induce fold-back inversions and relatively short BFB-like copy number patterns,[15] it is unlikely that such mechanisms will induce sufficiently long copy number patterns coupled with significant presence of fold-back inversions, and therefore when such evidence are observed they are considered to be indicative of BFB.