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Plant Centromeres

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Plant Cytogenetics

Part of the book series: Plant Genetics and Genomics: Crops and Models ((PGG,volume 4))

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Abstract

The centromeres of maize, Arabidopsis, and rice are compared. Plant centromeres are quite diverse on the DNA sequence level but possess similar structural features across taxa, namely megabase-sized arrays of small repeats interspersed with a specific retrotransposon family. On the contrary, the protein components of the kinetochore that functions in chromosome movement and forms over the site of the centromere is highly conserved. Plant centromeres exhibit epigenetic properties of specification as evidenced by the frequent finding of inactive centromeres that contain a full spectrum of DNA elements but are inherited over generations without forming a kinetochore. Plant centromeres have been demonstrated to be divisible by the process of misdivision, but the smaller centromeres produced show impaired function when their size falls below a threshold of a few hundred kilobases.

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Acknowledgments

Research on this topic in our laboratory is supported by grants DBI 0423898, DBI 0421671, and DBI 0701297 from the National Science Foundation.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Division of Biological Sciences, University of Missouri-Columbia, 117 Tucker Hall, Columbia, MO, 65211, USA

    James A. Birchler & Zhi Gao

  2. Division of Biological Sciences, University of Missouri, 117 Tucker Hall, Columbia, MO, 65211, USA

    Fangpu Han

  3. Department of Molecular Agrobiology, Institute of Genetics and Developmental Biology, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing, China

    Fangpu Han

Authors
  1. James A. Birchler
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  2. Zhi Gao
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  3. Fangpu Han
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Correspondence to James A. Birchler .

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Editors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Biological Science, Florida State University, Tallahassee, Florida, USA

    Hank W. Bass

  2. Division of Biological Sciences, University of Missouri, Columbia, Missouri, USA

    James A. Birchler

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Birchler, J.A., Gao, Z., Han, F. (2012). Plant Centromeres. In: Bass, H., Birchler, J. (eds) Plant Cytogenetics. Plant Genetics and Genomics: Crops and Models, vol 4. Springer, New York, NY. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-0-387-70869-0_6

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