Analysis of Carica papaya Telomeres and Telomere-Associated Proteins: Insights into the Evolution of Telomere Maintenance in Brassicales.

ABSTRACT: Telomeres are terminal regions of linear eukaryotic chromosomes that are critical for genome stability and continued cell proliferation. The draft assembly of the papaya genome provides an opportunity to analyze and compare the evolution of telomeric DNA sequence composition and telomere maintenance machinery in this and other organisms of the Brassicales Order, which includes Arabidopsis. Here we investigate telomere size and sequence variation at papaya chromosome ends. As with most other plant species, papaya telomeres consist of TTTAGGG repeats. However, in contrast to members of the closely related Brassicaceae family, telomeres in papaya are ~10-fold longer. Sequence analysis reveals that many centromereproximal telomere repeats in papaya harbor nucleotide substitutions and insertion

SUBMITTER: Shakirov EV 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC2909770 | biostudies-literature | 2008 Dec

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature