Secretariat, Alumni Association, IDAC
Date Wednesday, 13 October 2021,16:00~17:00
Room Center for Smart Aging Research 1F, IDAC
Title Suppression of Selfish Centromeres
Speaker KUMON, Tomohiro
Affiliation University of Pennsylvania
Organizer Kenji.Iemura (Department of Molecular Oncology・ext 8450)
Abstract Selfish centromeres are the example of repetitive DNA that selfishly increases the chance of inheritance at the expense of the host fitness. Evolutionary arms race between selfish genetic elements and their suppressor mechanisms drives their rapid evolution. Despite the universal requirement for faithful chromosome segregation, eukaryotic centromeres are rapidly evolving. Evolutionary theory suggests that centromere proteins evolve to suppress costs of selfish centromere DNA, but the suppression mechanism remains unclear. In hybrid mouse models with genetically different maternal and paternal centromeres, selfish centromere DNA exploits a kinetochore pathway to recruit microtubule-destabilizing proteins that act as drive effectors. We show that such functional differences are suppressed by a parallel pathway for effector recruitment by heterochromatin, which is similar between centromeres in this system. We propose that centromere proteins have recurrently evolved to minimize the kinetochore pathway, which is exploited by selfish DNA, relative to the heterochromatin pathway that equalizes centromeres, while maintaining essential functions.
参考文献:Kumon, T. et al. Parallel pathways for recruiting effector proteins determine centromere drive and suppression. Cell 184,
4904-4918.e11 (2021)