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A tale of two centromeres—diversity of structure but conservation of function in plants and animals

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Abstract

The structural and functional aspects of two specific centromeres, one drawn from the animal kingdom (Drosophila) and the other from the plant kingdom (maize), are compared. Both cases illustrate an epigenetic component to centromere specification. The observations of neocentromeres in Drosophila and inactive centromeres in maize constitute one line of evidence for this hypothesis. Another common feature is the divisibility of centromere function with reduced stability as the size decreases. The systems differ in that Drosophila has no common sequence repeat at all centromeres, whereas maize has a 150-bp unit present in tandem arrays together with a centromere-specific transposon, centromere retrotransposon maize, present at all primary constrictions. Aspects of centromere structure known only from one or the other system might be common to both, namely, the presence of centromere RNAs in the kinetochore as found in maize and the organization of the centromeric histone 3 in tetrameric nucleosomes.

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Acknowledgements

Research on the topics covered is supported by grants from that National Science Foundation DBI 0421671, DBI 0423898 and DBI 0701297.

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  1. Division of Biological Sciences, University of Missouri, Columbia, MO, 65211, USA

    James A. Birchler, Zhi Gao & Fangpu Han

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  1. James A. Birchler
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  2. Zhi Gao
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  3. Fangpu Han
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Correspondence to James A. Birchler.

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Birchler, J.A., Gao, Z. & Han, F. A tale of two centromeres—diversity of structure but conservation of function in plants and animals. Funct Integr Genomics 9, 7–13 (2009). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10142-008-0104-9

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10142-008-0104-9

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