Abstract
AbstractBackgroundIt has been proposed that pericentromeric satellite DNA arises from the progressive proximal expansion of ancient centromeric DNA. In an attempt to recover putative ancestral centromeric DNA, we microdissected the pericentromeric/centromeric DNA from the chromosome X + 3 of Indian muntjac (Muntiacus muntjak vaginalis) and constructed a microclone-library of the X + 3 centromeric DNA.ResultsA new cervid satellite DNA element, designated as satellite VI, was isolated from this library. Fluorescence in situ hybridization (FISH) studies revealed that satellite VI is predominately located on the distal pericentromeric region of the Indian muntjac chromosome X + 3 and on the pericentromeres of several Old World deer species studied. Its sequence is organized as 11-bp monomeric (ATCACGTGGGA) tandem repeats. Further sequencing on a BAC clone of Indian muntjac harboring this repeat showed that an array of this repeat stretches over approximately 5 kb followed by approximately 3 kb of interspersed repetitive sequences, such as long interspersed elements (LINEs), short interspersed elements (SINEs), and long terminal repeats (LTRs).ConclusionsBased on the chromosomal localization, genomic and sequence organization, and copy numbers of satellite VI in deer species studied, we postulate that this newly found satellite DNA could be a putative ancient cervidic centromeric DNA that is still preserved in some Old World deer. Interestingly, the first eight nucleotides of the 11-bp monomeric consensus sequences are highly conserved and identical to the CDEI element in the centromere of the budding yeastSaccharomyces cerevisiae. The centromeric/pericentromeric satellite DNA harboring abundant copies of CDEI sequences is the first found in a mammalian species. Several zipper-like d (GGGA)2motifs were also found in the (ATCACGTGGGA)nrepeat of satellite VI DNA. Whether the satellite VI is structurally and functionally correlated with the CDEI of centromere of budding yeast and whether a zipper-like structure forms in satellite VI require further studies.
Highlights
It has been proposed that pericentromeric satellite DNA arises from the progressive proximal expansion of ancient centromeric DNA
Signals of digoxigenin-labeled degenerate oligonucleotide-primed polymerase chain reaction (DOP-PCR) products were localized to all centromeres of male Indian muntjac chromosomes (Figure 2)
This indicated that the DOP-PCR products contain a mixture of centromeric DNA satellite DNA families
Summary
A pericentromeric satellite DNA has been proposed to have originated from the progressive proximal expansion of ancient centromeric DNA (Schueler and Sullivan 2006) This hypothesis was supported by the following lines of evidence: (1) The sequence organization of centromeric domains on the primate X chromosomes is physically symmetrical (Schueler et al 2005), (2) organization of monomers (Smit et al 1995; Schueler et al 2001). (5) The centromeric higher order units of orthologous chromosomes from different primate species are more divergent than the pericentric monomer units (Rudd et al 2006) These findings suggested that the distal pericentromere is the region that may contain ‘palaeontological record’ of ancient satellite arrays and could represent the functional centromeric regions in ancestral primates (Bayes and Malik 2008). Cervid satellite I (an old cervid satellite DNA) (Lee et al 1994; Lin et al 1991), cervid satellite II (a functional centromeric satellite DNA) (Vafa et al 1999; Li et al 2000b), and cervid satellite IV (Li et al 2002) had been found in the X + 3 centromere region of Indian muntjac
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