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Tong, Pin, Pidoux, Alison L., Toda, Nicholas R.T., Ard, Ryan, Berger, Harald, Shukla, Manu, Torres-Garcia, Jesus, Müller, Carolin A., Nieduszynski, Conrad A. 
ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0003-2001-076X and Allshire, Robin C.
(2019)
Interspecies conservation of organisation and function between nonhomologous regional centromeres.
Nature Communications, 10 (1).
ISSN 2041-1723
Abstract
Despite the conserved essential function of centromeres, centromeric DNA itself is not conserved. The histone-H3 variant, CENP-A, is the epigenetic mark that specifies centromere identity. Paradoxically, CENP-A normally assembles on particular sequences at specific genomic locations. To gain insight into the specification of complex centromeres, here we take an evolutionary approach, fully assembling genomes and centromeres of related fission yeasts. Centromere domain organization, but not sequence, is conserved between Schizosaccharomyces pombe, S. octosporus and S. cryophilus with a central CENP-ACnp1 domain flanked by heterochromatic outer-repeat regions. Conserved syntenic clusters of tRNA genes and 5S rRNA genes occur across the centromeres of S. octosporus and S. cryophilus, suggesting conserved function. Interestingly, nonhomologous centromere central-core sequences from S. octosporus and S. cryophilus are recognized in S. pombe, resulting in cross-species establishment of CENP-ACnp1 chromatin and functional kinetochores. Therefore, despite the lack of sequence conservation, Schizosaccharomyces centromere DNA possesses intrinsic conserved properties that promote assembly of CENP-A chromatin.
| Item Type: | Article |
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| Additional Information: | Funding Information: We thank Alastair Kerr, Shaun Webb and Daniel Robertson for bioinformatics support, David Kelly for microscopy support, Ken Sawin and Takeshi Urano for antibodies, and Kojiro Ishii, Ken Sawin and Nick Rhind for yeast strains. We thank Robert Lyons, Joe Washburn, Christina McHenry (University of Michigan) and Greg J. Hannon, Richard McCombie, Eric Antoniou and Sara Goodwin (CSHL) for PacBio sequencing. We are grateful to Chris Ponting for advice and comments on the manuscript and to Sandra Catania and other members of the Allshire and Heun labs for helpful discussions. N.R.T.T., R.A. and J.T.-G. were supported by the Darwin Trust of Edinburgh. The Darwin Trust and a Principal’s Career Development scholarship supported N.R.T.T. P.T. was partly supported by funding from the European Commission Network of Excellence EpiGeneSys-(HEALTH-F4-2010-257082) and a Wellcome Enhancement Award (095021) to R.C.A. R.C.A. is a Wellcome Principal Research Fellow (095021, 200885); the Wellcome Centre for Cell Biology is supported by core funding from Wellcome (203149). C.A.M. and C.A.N. are supported by Biotechnology and Biological Sciences Research Council (BBSRC) grant BB/N016858/1 and Wellcome Investigator Award 110064/Z/15/ Funding Information: Z. Pacific Biosciences (PacBio) sequencing carried out at the CSHL Cancer Center Next Generation Genomics Shared Resource, which is supported by the Cancer Center Support Grant 5P30CA045508 was paid for by a kind gift from Kathryn W. Davis to G.J.H. Publisher Copyright: © 2019, The Author(s). |
| Uncontrolled Keywords: | chemistry(all),biochemistry, genetics and molecular biology(all),physics and astronomy(all) ,/dk/atira/pure/subjectarea/asjc/1600 |
| Faculty \ School: | Faculty of Science > School of Biological Sciences |
| Related URLs: | |
| Depositing User: | LivePure Connector |
| Date Deposited: | 07 Sep 2022 14:31 |
| Last Modified: | 21 Oct 2022 01:37 |
| URI: | https://ueaeprints.uea.ac.uk/id/eprint/87853 |
| DOI: | 10.1038/s41467-019-09824-4 |
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