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Strong conservation of the bird Z chromosome in reptilian genomes is revealed by comparative painting despite 275 million years divergence

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Abstract

The divergence of lineages leading to extant squamate reptiles (lizards, snakes, and amphisbaenians) and birds occurred about 275 million years ago. Birds, unlike squamates, have karyotypes that are typified by the presence of a number of very small chromosomes. Hence, a number of chromosome rearrangements might be expected between bird and squamate genomes. We used chromosome-specific DNA from flow-sorted chicken (Gallus gallus) Z sex chromosomes as a probe in cross-species hybridization to metaphase spreads of 28 species from 17 families representing most main squamate lineages and single species of crocodiles and turtles. In all but one case, the Z chromosome was conserved intact despite very ancient divergence of sauropsid lineages. Furthermore, the probe painted an autosomal region in seven species from our sample with characterized sex chromosomes, and this provides evidence against an ancestral avian-like system of sex determination in Squamata. The avian Z chromosome synteny is, therefore, conserved albeit it is not a sex chromosome in these squamate species.

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Acknowledgment

We are grateful to Frances L. Lovell, Margaret Wallduck, Paola Nisi Cerioni, and Šárka Pelikánová for assisting in cell culture or FISH experiments and two anonymous reviewers for valuable comments. Petr Ráb and Marie Rábová provided continuous support and encouragement. The studies were supported by grants GAČR 506/10/0718, GAUK 9942/2009 and MŠMT 0021620828. The work of MP in Cambridge was supported by the ThermAdapt research network programme of the European Science Foundation (http://www.esf.org/thermadapt). VAT was supported by the Royal Society and RFBR grants. The paper represents the third part of the series “Evolution of sex determining systems in lizards” by MP and LK.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Faculty of Science, Charles University in Prague, Viničná 7, 128 44, Prague 2, Czech Republic

    Martina Pokorná & Lukáš Kratochvíl

  2. Department of Vertebrate Evolutionary Biology and Genetics, Institute of Animal Physiology and Genetics, Academy of Sciences of the Czech Republic, Rumburská 89, 277 21, Liběchov, Czech Republic

    Martina Pokorná

  3. Dipartimento di Biochimica, Biologia e Genetica, Università Politecnica delle Marche, via Ranieri 65, 60100, Ancona, Italy

    Massimo Giovannotti, Vincenzo Caputo & Ettore Olmo

  4. Institute of Chemical Biology and Fundamental Medicine SB RAS, Novosibirsk, 630090, Russia

    Vladimir A. Trifonov

  5. Cambridge Resource Centre for Comparative Genomics, Department of Veterinary Medicine, University of Cambridge, Madingley Road, Cambridge, CB3 0ES, UK

    Martina Pokorná, Massimo Giovannotti, Fumio Kasai, Vladimir A. Trifonov, Patricia C. M. O’Brien, Malcolm A. Ferguson-Smith & Willem Rens

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  1. Martina Pokorná
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  2. Massimo Giovannotti
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  5. Vladimir A. Trifonov
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  6. Patricia C. M. O’Brien
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  7. Vincenzo Caputo
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  8. Ettore Olmo
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  9. Malcolm A. Ferguson-Smith
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Correspondence to Lukáš Kratochvíl or Willem Rens.

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Communicated by E. Nigg

M. Pokorná and M. Giovannotti contributed equally to the paper.

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Pokorná, M., Giovannotti, M., Kratochvíl, L. et al. Strong conservation of the bird Z chromosome in reptilian genomes is revealed by comparative painting despite 275 million years divergence. Chromosoma 120, 455–468 (2011). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00412-011-0322-0

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