A karyotype provides information about what aspects of a cell?

• A. The number and visual appearance of its chromosomes.
• B. The sequence of nucleotides in its DNA.
• C. The metabolic pathways active in the cell.
• D. The cell's gene expression profile.

Answer: (C)

A karyotype is focused on the number and visual appearance of chromosomes in a cell, typically arranged to reveal their number and structure at metaphase. By staining and sorting chromosomes, you can count how many there are and notice large-scale features like size, centromere position, and banding patterns, which helps detect abnormalities such as extra or missing chromosomes or big rearrangements. It does not show the DNA sequence, so you wouldn’t infer the exact nucleotide order from a karyotype. It also doesn’t indicate which metabolic pathways are active or measure gene expression, both of which require other types of analyses that assess biochemistry or RNA levels, respectively.