High-resolution comparative chromosome painting in the Arizona collared peccary (Pecari tajacu, Tayassuidae): a comparison with the karyotype of pig and sheep

Chromosomal evolution and phylogenetic analyses in Tayassu pecari and Pecari tajacu (Tayassuidae): tales from constitutive heterochromatin

“…Thus, our data suggest that the radiation of the two species was extremely fast, and the great dissimilarity between the species is also in agreement with the results from the comparative chromosome data with pig probes (Bosma et al 2004;Adega et al 2006). The higher number of Cpositive heterochromatin classes/subclasses on P. tajacu autosomes suggests that this karyotype is more primitive, that is it did not go through a high level of homogenization due to concerted evolution of chromosomes.…”

“…The comparative chromosome painting results between the domestic pig and white-lipped and collared peccaries clearly revealed the high level of reshuffling between these two karyotypes (Bosma et al 2004;Adega et al 2006). Based on these two works, and on the assumption that the pres-ence of CH facilitates the occurrence of chromosomal rearrangements (Yunis and Yasmineh 1971;Peacock et al 1982;John 1988;Chaves et al 2004), we made a com-parative analysis between T. pecari and P. tajacu CH lo-calization and the breakpoints in each chromosome (figure 3).…”

“…The nomenclature used for the chromosomes of T. pecari is that of Bosma et al (2004), and for P. tajacu that of Adega et al (2006).…”

“…Pirtle 1967;Hufty et al 1973;Giannoni et al 1982a,b;Benirschke and Kumamoto 1989;Zijlstra et al 1997) of the peccaries Pecari tajacu (collared peccary) and Tayassu pecari (white-lipped peccary) are well known, and even molecular cytogenetic studies, such as rRNA gene assignments in T. pecari (Bosma et al 2004) and comparative chromosome painting with pig (Bosma et al 2004;Adega et al 2006) and sheep paint probes in both species (Adega et al 2006;and unpublished data) are available, but their CH was only analysed by classical C-banding techniques (Pirtle 1967;Benirschke and Kumamoto 1989).…”

“…Since these two species are related, and the syntenic regions as well as the chromosomal evolutionary rearrangements (relative to another suiform genome, the pig) are known (Bosma et al 2004;Adega et al 2006), it was possible to track the C-positive heterochromatin along the chromosomes of the two species, and hence to delineate a hypothesis on the evolutionary remodelling of heterochromatin in these species. Further, this approach is a contribution to the understanding of the chromosomal evolutionary process and phylogenetic relationships within this family.…”