Centromeres in budding yeasts are conserved in chromosomal location but not in structure.

ABSTRACT: The budding yeast Saccharomyces cerevisiae has 'point' centromeres, which are much smaller and simpler than centromeres of most other eukaryotes and have a defined DNA sequence. Other yeast taxa have different and highly diverse centromere structures, but a clear picture of how yeast centromeres have evolved is lacking. Here, we investigated nine yeast species in two taxonomic orders that are close outgroups to S. cerevisiae. We find that they have a wide diversity of centromere structures, indicating that multiple transitions of structure have occurred within the last 200 Myr. Some species have centromeres with defined sequence motifs (17 - 200 bp), others consist of Inverted Repeats (IRs), and others have Ty5-like retroelement clusters. Strikingly, the chromosomal locations of centromere

SUBMITTER: Hession C 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC12711049 | biostudies-literature | 2025 Dec

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature