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The dynamics of chromosome evolution in birds and mammals

David W.Burt*, Charlotte Bruley*, Ian C.Dunn*, Cheryl T.Jones*, Anne Ramage*, Andy S.Law*, David R.Morrice*, Ian R.Paton*, Jacqueline Smith*, Dawn Winsor*, Alexel Sazanov', Ruedl Fries' & David Warrington*


*Roslin Institute(Edinburgh), Roslin, Midlothian, EH25 9PS, UK
'Lehrstuhl fur tierzucht, TUM, Freising, Weihenstephan, Munich D-85350, Germany

Abstract from Nature paper Vol 402, 25 November 1999, p411-413
Comparative mapping, which compares the location of homologous genes in different species, is a powerful tool for studying genome evolution1. Comparative maps suggest that rates of chromosomal change in mammals can vary from one to ten rearrangements per million years 1-4. On the basis of these rates we would expect 84 to 600 conserved segments in a chicken comparison between human or mouse. Here we build comparative maps between these species and estimate that numbers of conserved segments are in the lower part of this range. We conclud that the organization of the human genome is closer to that of the chicken than the mouse and by adding comparative mapping results from a range of vertebrates, we identify three possible phases of chromosomal eveoltion. The relative stability of genomes such as those of the chicken and human will enable the reconstruction of maps of ancestral vertebrates.

Table 1.Human, mouse and chick comparative gene map Table 2.Lengths of conserved autosomal segments in the mouse and human comparison Table 3.Lengths of conserved autosomal segments in the chicken and human comparison
Table 4.Lengths of conserved autosomal segments in the chicken and mouse comparison Table 5.Table 5.Differences in the chicken/human and chicken/mouse conserved segments Table 6.Estimates of the number of conserved blocks of autosomal synteny between pairs of vertebrates
Table 7. Observed and predicted numbers of conserved segments Figure 1. Dynamics of chromosome evolution in birds and mammals

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