Centromere Emergence in Evolution

Inbreeding drives maize centromere evolution.

Functional centromeres, the chromosomal sites of spindle attachment during cell division, are marked epigenetically by the centromere-specific histone H3 variant cenH3 and typically contain long stretches of centromere-specific tandem DNA repeats (∼1.8 Mb in maize). In 23 inbreds of domesticated maize chosen to represent the genetic diversity of maize germplasm, partial or nearly complete loss ...

Centromere dynamics and chromosome evolution in marsupials.

The eukaryotic centromere poses an interesting evolutionary paradox: it is a chromatin entity indispensable to precise chromosome segregation in all eukaryotes, yet the DNA at the heart of the centromere is remarkably variable. Its important role of spindle attachment to the kinetochore during meiosis and mitosis notwithstanding, recent studies implicate the centromere as an active player in ch...

Centromere Evolution: Digging into Mammalian Primary Constriction

Emergence of asymmetry in evolution.

We investigate symmetry-breaking bifurcation patterns in evolution in the framework of adaptive dynamics (AD). We define weak and strong symmetry. The former applies for populations where only the simultaneous reflection of all individuals is an invariant transformation. The symmetry is strong in populations where reflection of some, but not all, individuals leaves the situation unchanged. We s...

Rapid centromere evolution in potato: invasion of the satellite repeats.

In contrast to the gene-rich chromosome arms, the sequence of a typical plant centromere contains a large amount of repetitive DNA, most commonly large tracts of tandemly repeated sequences, or satellite DNA. However, the question of how this arrangement of sequences comes about is still a matter of active debate (reviewed in Malik and Henikoff, 2009). Centromere sequence evolves rapidly, possi...