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.
