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The region homologous to the X-chromosome inactivation centre has been disrupted in marsupial and monotreme mammals

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Summary

Marsupial, as well as eutherian, mammals are subject to X chromosome inactivation in the somatic cells of females, although the phenotype and the molecular mechanism differ in important respects. Monotreme mammals appear to subscribe at least to a form of dosage compensation of X-borne genes. An important question is whether inactivation in these non-eutherian mammals involves co-ordination by a control locus homologous to the XIST gene and neighbouring genes, which play a key regulatory role in human and mouse X inactivation. We mapped BACs containing several orthologues of protein-coding genes that flank human and mouse XIST and genes that lie in the homologous region in chicken and frog. We found that these genes map to two distant locations on the opossum X, and also to different locations on a platypus autosome. We failed to find any trace of an XIST orthologue in any marsupial or monotreme or on any flanking BAC, confirming the conclusion from recent work that non-eutherian mammals lack XIST. We propose the region homologous to the human and mouse X-inactivation centre expanded in early mammals, and this unstable region was disrupted independently in marsupial and monotreme lineages. In the eutherian lineage, inserted and existing sequences provided the starting material for the non-translated RNAs of the X-inactivation centre, including XIST.

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Author notes

  1. Matthew J. Wakefield

    Present address: Walter and Eliza Hall Institute of Medical Research, Parkville Victoria, 3050, Australia

Authors and Affiliations

  1. ARC Centre for Kangaroo Genomics, Research School of Biological Sciences, The Australian National University, Canberra, ACT 2601, Australia

    Timothy A. Hore, Edda Koina, Matthew J. Wakefield & Jennifer A. Marshall Graves

Authors
  1. Timothy A. Hore
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  2. Edda Koina
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  3. Matthew J. Wakefield
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  4. Jennifer A. Marshall Graves
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Correspondence to Timothy A. Hore.

Electronic Supplementary Material

Below are the links of the images with a high resolution version

Fig. 1

Human

Fig. 2a

Base genome: Human

Fig. 2b

Base genome: Human

Fig. 3a

Base genome: Mouse

Fig. 3b

Base genome: Mouse

Fig. 4

Human

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Hore, T.A., Koina, E., Wakefield, M.J. et al. The region homologous to the X-chromosome inactivation centre has been disrupted in marsupial and monotreme mammals. Chromosome Res 15, 147–161 (2007). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10577-007-1119-0

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10577-007-1119-0

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