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In general, the strict preservation of broad-scale structure is thought to be critical for maintaining the precisely tuned functionality of vertebrate genomes, although nearly all vertebrate species undergo a small number of programmed local rearrangements during development (e.g., remodeling of adaptive immune receptor loci). However, a limited number of metazoan species undergo much more extensive reorganizations as a normal feature of their development. Here, we show that the sea lamprey (Petromyzon marinus), a jawless vertebrate, undergoes a dramatic remodeling of its genome, resulting in the elimination of hundreds of millions of base pairs (and at least one transcribed locus) from many somatic cell lineages during embryonic development. These studies reveal the highly dynamic nature of the lamprey genome and provide the first example of broad-scale programmed rearrangement of a definitively vertebrate genome. Understanding the mechanisms by which this vertebrate species regulates such extensive remodeling of its genome will provide invaluable insight into factors that can promote stability and change in vertebrate genomes.A few species are known to undergo extensive genomic rearrangements during the specification of different cell lineages [e.g., sciarid flies (1, 2), some copepods (3, 4), and some roundworms (5)] or nuclear lineages [e.g., ciliates (6, 7)] (8). These rearrangements result in the selective removal of repetitive sequences (9-11), entire chromosomes (5), or single-copy genes (12, 13). Notably, only one chordate group (hagfish) is thought to undergo similar large-scale rearrangements and possesses certain repetitive elements in its germline that undergo diminution in somatic tissues, sometimes exhibiting a reduction in chromosome number (9-11). The unique genome biologies of these organisms are fascinating because changes that are tightly regulated in these exceptional genomes are reminiscent of the dysregulated structural changes that give rise to cancers or other genomic disorders (14,15). In this context, developmentally regulated rearrangements hold great potential for studying the factors that promote genome stability and change in normally developing somatic cells and the means by which alterations in genome structure contribute to the differentiation of cell lineages (8).Here, we report new data that reveal extensive programmed genome rearrangement in the sea lamprey, an important model system for studying basal vertebrate biology. Several complementary lines of evidence indicate that hundreds of megabases of DNA are specifically removed from somatic cell lineages. Here, we demonstrate the existence of a specific DNA sequence (called Germ1) that is highly abundant in germline but substantially rarer in many, if not all, somatic tissues. Fluorescence in situ hybridization reveals that Germ1 is present at a high copy number on several chromosomes in meiotic germline but dramatically reduced in soma. Estimates of relative copy number indicate that the loss of Germ1 is tightly regulated an...
Chromatin diminution, a developmentally regulated process of DNA elimination, is found in numerous eukaryotic species. In the copepod Mesocyclops edax, some 90% of its genomic DNA is eliminated during the differentiation of embryonic cells into somatic cells. Previous studies have shown that the eliminated DNA contains highly repetitive sequences. Here, we sequenced DNA fragments from pre- and postdiminution cells to determine whether nonhighly repetitive sequences are also eliminated during the process of chromatin diminution. Comparative analyses of these sequences, as well as the sequences eliminated from the genome of the copepod Cyclops kolensis, show that they all share similar abundances of tandem repeats, dispersed repeats, transposable elements, and various coding and noncoding sequences. This suggests that, in the chromatin diminution observed in M. edax, both highly repetitive and nonhighly repetitive sequences are eliminated and that there is no bias in the type of nonhighly repetitive DNA being eliminated.
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