Dynamics of Mammalian Chromosome Evolution Inferred from Multispecies Comparative Maps
William J. Murphy,1,3*
Denis M. Larkin,5*
Annelie Everts-van der Wind,5*
Guillaume Bourque,8
Glenn Tesler,9
Loretta Auvil,6
Jonathan E. Beever,5
Bhanu P. Chowdhary,1
Francis Galibert,11
Lisa Gatzke,6
Christophe Hitte,11
Stacey N. Meyers,5
Denis Milan,12
Elaine A. Ostrander,13
Greg Pape,6
Heidi G. Parker,13
Terje Raudsepp,1
Margarita B. Rogatcheva,5
Lawrence B. Schook,5,7
Loren C. Skow,1
Michael Welge,6
James E. Womack,2
Stephen J. O'Brien,4
Pavel A. Pevzner,10
Harris A. Lewin5,7
The genome organizations of eight phylogenetically distinct species from five mammalian orders were compared in order to address fundamental questions relating to mammalian chromosomal evolution. Rates of chromosome evolution within mammalian orders were found to increase since the Cretaceous-Tertiary boundary. Nearly 20% of chromosome breakpoint regions were reused during mammalian evolution; these reuse sites are also enriched for centromeres. Analysis of gene content in and around evolutionary breakpoint regions revealed increased gene density relative to the genome-wide average. We found that segmental duplications populate the majority of primate-specific breakpoints and often flank inverted chromosome segments, implicating their role in chromosomal rearrangement.
1 Department of Veterinary Integrative Biosciences, Texas A&M University, College Station, TX 77843, USA.
2 Department of Veterinary Pathobiology, Texas A&M University, College Station, TX 77843, USA.
3 SAIC-Frederick Inc., National Cancer Institute, Frederick, MD 21702, USA.
4 Laboratory of Genomic Diversity, National Cancer Institute, Frederick, MD 21702, USA.
5 Department of Animal Sciences, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, Urbana, IL 61801, USA.
6 National Center for Supercomputing Applications, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, Urbana, IL 61801, USA.
7 Institute for Genomic Biology, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, Urbana, IL 61801, USA.
8 Genome Institute of Singapore, 138672, Singapore.
9 Department of Mathematics, University of California, San Diego, CA 92093, USA.
10 Department of Computer Science and Engineering, University of California, San Diego, CA 92093, USA.
11 UMR6061-CNRS, Genetique et developpement, Université de Rennes 1, 35043 Rennes, France.
12 Laboratoire de Génétique Cellulaire, INRA, 31326 Castanet-Tolosan, France.
13 National Human Genome Research Institute, Bethesda, MD 20892, USA.
* These authors contributed equally to this work.
To whom correspondence should be addressed. E-mail: wmurphy{at}cvm.tamu.edu; h-lewin{at}uiuc.edu
