Karyotypes are the number and types of chromosomes in a eukaryotic cell – they are determined via a process that involves:
- Harvesting cells (usually from a fetus or white blood cells of adults)
- Chemically inducing cell division, then arresting mitosis while the chromosomes are condensed
- The stage during which mitosis is halted will determine whether chromosomes appear with sister chromatids or not
- The chromosomes of an organism are arranged into homologous pairs according to size (with sex chromosomes shown last)