植物着丝粒结构及进化的研究进展

Research Progress on Structure and Evolution of Plant Centromeres

摘要:

植物着丝粒是染色体重要结构域，介导动粒装配。不同物种间着丝粒重复序列快速趋异进化，着丝粒功能保守，确保有丝分裂和减数分裂过程中染色体正确分离和准确传递。伴随染色质免疫共沉淀技术(chromatin immunoprecipitation, ChIP)、ChIP与高密度芯片相结合技术(ChIP-chip)、ChIP与高通量测序相结合技术(ChIP-seq)的应用，植物着丝粒研究获得里程碑式进展：某些模式植物着丝粒DNA序列、蛋白质结构、功能获得大量新认识；着丝粒基本蛋白质组蛋白H3被用来界定着丝粒大小和边界；某些非着丝粒区域被激活为新着丝粒，在世代传递中保持稳定性。本文对植物着丝粒结构、功能、进化研究进行了综述，并探讨了植物着丝粒研究存在的问题。

Abstract:

The plant centromere is the most important chromosome domain mediating the assembly of kinetochore. The rapid divergent evolution of centromeric repeat sequences and function conservation of centromeres among different species ensure correct segregation and faithful transmission of chromosome in mitosis and meiosis. Along with the development of chromatin immunoprecipitation (ChIP), ChIP-chip, and ChIP-sequencing (ChIP-seq) technologies, three milestone discoveries have achieved in plant centromere research since the last 20 years, such as a lot of new knowledge on the structure, function, and evolution of centromeres from model plants, the fundamental kinetochore protein CENH3 used to delimiting the size and boundaries of centromere, the neocentromeres activated from non-centromeric regions stably transmitted to subsequent generations. The research progress on structure, function, and evolution of plant centromeres are reviewed and the remaining questions of plant centromere studies are discussed.