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Genomic and cytological analysis of the Y chromosome of Drosophila melanogaster: telomere-derived sequences at internal regions

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Abstract

The genomic analysis of heterochromatin is essential for studying chromosome behavior as well as for understanding chromosome evolution. The Y chromosome of Drosophila melanogaster is entirely heterochromatic and the under-representation of this chromosome in genomic libraries together with the difficulty of assembling its sequence has made its study very difficult. Here, we present the construction of bacterial artificial chromosome (BAC) contigs from regions h14, h16 and the centromeric region h18. The analysis of these contigs shows that telomere-derived sequences are present at internal regions. In addition, immunostaining of prometaphase chromosomes with an antibody to the kinetochore-specific protein BubR1 has revealed the presence of this protein in some Y chromosome regions rich in telomere-related sequences. Collectively, our data provide further evidence for the hypothesis that the Drosophila Y chromosomes might have evolved from supernumerary chromosomes.

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Acknowledgements

We are grateful to C. Tyler-Smith for critical comments and suggestions. We thank C. Sunkel for the anti-BubR1 antibody and R. Levis, M.-L. Pardue and T.H. Eickbush for transposable element probes. This work was supported by grant BMC2002-02632 from the Dirección General de Investigación del MCYT (to A.V.), a grant from the Fundación Ramón Areces (to A.M.-G.) and an institutional grant from the Fundación Ramón Areces.

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Author notes

  1. Marta Agudo

    Present address: Centre for Neuroscience, King’s College London, London, UK

  2. Isabel Molina

    Present address: Departamento de Biología, UAM, Madrid, Spain

  3. Giovanna Giovinazzo

    Present address: Centro Nacional de Biotecnología, CSIC, Cantoblanco, Madrid, Spain

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Centro de Biología Molecular Severo Ochoa (CBMSO), CSIC-UAM, Cantoblanco, 28049, Madrid, Spain

    José P. Abad, Beatriz de Pablos, Marta Agudo, Isabel Molina, Giovanna Giovinazzo & Alfredo Villasante

  2. Servicio Interdepartamental de Investigación (SIdI), UAM, Madrid, Spain

    Antonia Martín-Gallardo

Authors
  1. José P. Abad
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  2. Beatriz de Pablos
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  3. Marta Agudo
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  4. Isabel Molina
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  5. Giovanna Giovinazzo
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  6. Antonia Martín-Gallardo
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  7. Alfredo Villasante
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Corresponding author

Correspondence to Alfredo Villasante.

Additional information

Communicated by S. Pimpinelli

The first two authors contributed equally to this work

Antonia Martín-Gallardo died Monday, 23 August 2004, after a long battle with cancer

The GenBank Accession numbers for the sequences reported in this paper are AJ549653–96, AJ549701–2, AJ549725–6, AJ 549737–8, AJ549747–8, AJ549751–2, AJ 586980, AJ781048–58

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Abad, J.P., de Pablos, B., Agudo, M. et al. Genomic and cytological analysis of the Y chromosome of Drosophila melanogaster: telomere-derived sequences at internal regions. Chromosoma 113, 295–304 (2004). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00412-004-0318-0

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