A tandemly repetitive, centromeric DNA sequence from the Canadian woodland caribou (Rangifer tarandus caribou): Its conservation and evolution in several deer species

Abstract

A highly repetitive DNA clone, designated Rt-Pst3, was isolated from the PstI digest of Canadian woodland caribou (Rangifer tarandus caribou; 2n = 70) genomic DNA. It was found to be a 991 bp monomer of a tandemly repeated DNA sequence comprising about 5.7% of the genome and localized to the centromeric regions of all caribou acrocentric autosomes. Southern blot analyses revealed that this caribou satellite DNA sequence was well conserved in the genomes of five other deer species studied. In situ hybridization studies revealed Rt-Pst3-homologous DNA sequences in the centromeric regions of white-tailed deer chromosomes and Asian muntjac chromosomes, as well as at several interstitial chromosome regions in Indian muntjac chromosomes. Comparisons of the Rt-Pst3 DNA sequence to previously identified centromeric satellite DNA fragments from three other deer species revealed considerable DNA sequence similarity. The first ca. 800 bp of the Rt-Pst3 clone was found to share 73.8% similarity to the CCsatI clone of the European roe deer, 64.7% sequence similarity to the C5 DNA clone of the Chinese muntjac, and 64.8% and 65.6% sequence similarity to the 1A and B1 clones of the Indian muntjac, respectively. Moreover, the last 191 bp of the Rt-Pst3 clone was found to share about 60% DNA sequence similarity to the first 191 bp of the same clone. Amplification of one original ca. 800 bp monomer unit, along with the first 191 bp of the following juxtaposed monomer unit could have resulted in the tandemly repeated, 991 bp monomer unit now seen in the caribou genome. It is postulated that the centromeric satellite DNA found in other deer species, having repeat lengths greater than 800 bp, could also have evolved in a similar manner from a more ancestral monomeric unit of ca. 800 bp.

Cloning, Characterization, and FISH Mapping of Four Satellite DNAs from Black Muntjac (<I>Muntiacus crinifrons</I>)and Fea's Muntjac (<I>M. feae</I>)

“…Some studies suggested that the repetitive DNA families at or near the centromeric and telomeric regions might facilitate illegitimate recombination between non-homologous chromosomes of muntjacs (Brinkley et al, 1984;Bogenberger et al, 1985Bogenberger et al, , 1987Benedum et al, 1986;Lin et al, 1991Lin et al, , 2004Lee et al, 1994Lee et al, , 1997Scherthan, 1995;Lee & Lin, 1996;Yang et al, 1997b;Li et al, 2000aLi et al, , b, 2002Hartmann & Scherthan, 2004). At present, four satellite DNA families are found in Muntiacus: satellite DNA families I, II, IV and V (Bogenberger et al, 1985;Lin et al, 1991Lin et al, , 2004Li et al, 2000bLi et al, , 2005.…”

Organization and evolution of a novel cervid satellite DNA with yeast CDEI-like repeats

“…Cell lines, chromosome preparations, and DNA isolation Metaphase chromosome spreads and genomic DNAs were prepared from the fibroblast cell lines of the following species: Indian muntjac (Muntiacus muntjak vaginalis) (male cell line, CCL-157, American Type Culture Collection; female cell line, kindly supplied by Dr. Andrew P. Feinberg, School of Medicine, Johns Hopkins University, Baltimore, MD, USA); Formosan muntjac (M. reevesi micrurus) ; caribou (Rangifer tarandus caribou) (Lin et al 1991;Lee et al 1994;Lin et al 2004); male black-tailed deer (Odocoileus hemionus hemionus) (CRL-6193, American Type Culture Collection); female Chinese water deer (Hydropotes inermis) (kindly provided by Dr. F. Yang, Centre for Veterinary Science, University of Cambridge, Cambridge, UK); Roe deer (Capreolus capreolus capreolus) cell line (from San Diego Zoo, San Diego, CA, USA) and male Formosan sambar deer (Cervus unicolor swinhoei) (Li et al 2005). Metaphase chromosome spreads and genomic DNAs of Formosan sika (Cervus nippon taioanus) and Asian red deer (Cervus elaphus) were prepared from blood samples provided by a certified deer farm in Taiwan.…”

“…We used the 32 P-labeled insert fragment of satVI-1C5 to probe the nylon membrane. The dot blot hybridization procedure has also been described elsewhere (Lee et al 1994;Li et al 2000a). A copy number was roughly estimated from the signal intensity of a control plasmid satVI-1C5 DNA (0.195 ng; approximately 0.054 ng of insert) that showed similar signal intensity as the genomic DNA (3.125 ng for male Indian muntjac and male Formosan muntjac each; 100 ng for male Sambar deer).…”

“…The centromeric/pericentromeric region of the Indian muntjac (Muntiacus muntjak vaginalis; barking deer) chromosome X + 3 is known to be exceptionally huge and compound in nature (Brinkley et al 1984) and may be composed of many different satellite DNA families (including functional centromeric and nonfunctional centromeric satellite DNAs as well as new and old satellite DNAs). Indeed, cervid satellite I (an old cervid satellite DNA) (Lee et al 1994;Lin et al 1991), cervid satellite II (a functional centromeric satellite DNA) (Vafa et al 1999;Li et al 2000b), and cervid satellite IV (Li et al 2002) had been found in the X + 3 centromere region of Indian muntjac.…”

Isolation and physical localization of new chromosome-specific centromeric repeats in farm animals

“…In the horse chromosomes, tandem repeat elements have been localized only in the centromeres of the acrocentrics, not in the metacentrics (Broad et al, 1995). Centromeric satellite probes have been obtained for many other species including rabbit (Ekes et al, 2004), roe deer (Buntjer et al, 1998) and caribou (Lee et al, 1994).…”