4.5 Article

Footprints of Inversions at Present and Past Pseudoautosomal Boundaries in Human Sex Chromosomes

Journal

GENOME BIOLOGY AND EVOLUTION
Volume 1, Issue -, Pages 56-66

Publisher

OXFORD UNIV PRESS
DOI: 10.1093/gbe/evp006

Keywords

inversion; duplication; recombination; sex chromosomes; evolutionary strata

Funding

  1. Agence Nationale de la Recherche (ANR) [NT05-3_45205, ANR-05-JCJC-0139-01, ANR-08-JCJC-0109]
  2. Programme AlBan
  3. European Union [E05D053131BR]

Ask authors/readers for more resources

The human sex chromosomes have stopped recombining gradually, which has left five evolutionary strata on the X chromosome. Y inversions are thought to have suppressed X-Y recombination but clear evidence is missing. Here, we looked for such evidence by focusing on a region-the X-added region (XAR)-that includes the pseudoautosomal region and the most recent strata 3 to 5. We estimated and analyzed the whole set of parsimonious scenarios of Y inversions given the gene order in XAR and its Y homolog. Comparing these to scenarios for simulated sequences suggests that the strata 4 and 5 were formed by Y inversions. By comparing the X and Y DNA sequences, we found clear evidence of two Y inversions associated with duplications that coincide with the boundaries of strata 4 and 5. Divergence between duplicates is in agreement with the timing of strata 4 and 5 formation. These duplicates show a complex pattern of gene conversion that resembles the pattern previously found for AMELXY, a stratum 3 locus. This suggests that this locus-despite AMELY being unbroken-was possibly involved in a Y inversion that formed stratum 3. However, no clear evidence supporting the formation of stratum 3 by a Y inversion was found, probably because this stratum is too old for such an inversion to be detectable. Our results strongly support the view that the most recent human strata have arisen by Y inversions and suggest that inversions have played a major role in the differentiation of our sex chromosomes.

Authors

I am an author on this paper
Click your name to claim this paper and add it to your profile.

Reviews

Primary Rating

4.5
Not enough ratings

Secondary Ratings

Novelty
-
Significance
-
Scientific rigor
-
Rate this paper

Recommended

No Data Available
No Data Available