Sequence signature analysis of chromosome identity in three Drosophila species

Background: All eukaryotic organisms need to distinguish each of their chromosomes. A few protein complexes have been described that recognise entire, specific chromosomes, for instance dosage compensation complexes and the recently discovered autosome-specific Painting of Fourth (POF) protein in Drosophila. However, no sequences have been found that are chromosomespecific and distributed over the entire length of the respective chromosome. Here, we present a new, unbiased, exhaustive computational method that was used to probe three Drosophila genomes for chromosome-specific sequences. Results: By combining genome annotations and cytological data with multivariate statistics related to three Drosophila genomes we found sequence signatures that distinguish Muller's F-elements (chromosome 4 in D. melanogaster) from all other chromosomes in Drosophila that are not attributable to differences in nucleotide composition, simple sequence repeats or repeated elements. Based on these sig...

• Type: Journal
• Year: 2005
• Where: BMCBI
• Authors: Per Stenberg, Fredrik Pettersson, Anja O. Saura, Anders Berglund, Jan Larsson
• Keywords: BMCBI 2005, Chromosomes, Drosophila, Specific Chromosomes