Reconstruction of Ancestral Genomes

Roscoe Stanyon, University of Florence, Florence, Italy
Fiorella Garofalo, University of Florence, Florence, Italy
Francesca Bigoni, University of Florence, Florence, Italy

Published online: March 2008

DOI: 10.1002/9780470015902.a0020752

Comparative genomics allow speculation about the content of the genome of ancestral species and for many major branching points on the tree of life, hypothetical ancestral genomes can be reconstructed. These reconstructions provide insight into evolutionary forces that have sculpted the genomes of extant species.

Keywords: chromosome painting; comparative molecular cytogenetics; phylogenomics; bioinformatics

Figure 1. Reconstruction of the ancestral genome of all living eutherian mammals depicted as conserved and rearranged human chromosomes. Chromosomes are colour coded (lower right) according to their syntenic homology to human chromosomes; the colour code is in the lower right. The number to the right of chromosomes or chromosome segments also indicates human homology. The ancestral genome of placental mammals would have a diploid number of 2n=44. The figure is based on data from Froenicke et al. (2006), Kellogg et al. (2007) and Svartman et al. (2006) as well as our own unpublished data.
Figure 2. Reconstruction of the ancestral genome of all living primates depicted as conserved and rearranged human chromosomes. Chromosomes are colour coded (lower right) according to their syntenic homology to human chromosomes; the colour code is in the lower right. The number to the right of chromosomes or chromosome segments also indicates human homology. The primate ancestral genome would have a diploid number of 2n=48. This figure is based on Murphy et al. (2001) with integration with data from current publications.
Figure 3. Reconstruction of the ancestral genome of all living carnivores depicted as conserved and rearranged human chromosome. Chromosomes are colour coded (lower right) according to their syntenic homology to human chromosomes; the colour code is in the upper right. The number to the right of chromosomes or chromosome segments also indicates human homology. The carnivore ancestral genome would have a diploid number of 2n=42. Figure is based on Murphy et al. (2001).
Figure 4. Reconstruction of the ancestral genome of all living sciurids depicted as conserved and rearranged human chromosomes. Chromosomes are colour coded (lower right) according to their syntenic homology to human chromosomes; the colour code is in the lower right. The number to the right of chromosomes or chromosome segments also indicates human homology. The ancestral genome of sciurids would have a diploid number of 2n=38. It is thought that the genome of sciurids is very close to the ancestral rodent genome (see text). Figure is based on Li et al. (2006) and personal communications from Graphodasky and our own unpublished data.
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 References
    Froenicke L, Caldes MG, Graphodatsky A et al. (2006) Are molecular cytogenetics and bioinformatics suggesting diverging models of ancestral mammalian genomes? Genome Research 16: 306–310.
    Kellogg ME, Burkett S, Dennis TR et al. (2007) Chromosome painting in the manatee supports Afrotheria and Paenungulata. BMC Evolutionary Biology 7: 6.
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    Murphy WJ, Larkin DM, Everts-van der Wind A et al. (2005) Dynamics of mammalian chromosome evolution inferred from multispecies comparative maps. Science 309: 613–617.
    other Murphy WJ, Stanyon R and O'Brien SJ (2001) Evolution of mammalian genome organization inferred from comparative gene mapping. Genome Biology 2: REVIEWS0005.
    Rocchi M, Archidiacono N and Stanyon R (2006) Ancestral genomes reconstruction: an integrated, multi-disciplinary approach is needed. Genome Research 16: 1441–1444.
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 Further Reading
    Dumas F, Stanyon R, Sineo L, Stone G and Bigoni F (2007) Phylogenomics of species from four genera of New World monkeys by flow sorting and reciprocal chromosome painting. BMC Evolutionary Biology 7(suppl. 2): S11.
    Kohn M, Hogel J, Vogel W et al. (2006) Reconstruction of a 450-My-old ancestral vertebrate protokaryotype. Trends in Genetics 22: 203–210.
    Nakatani Y, Takeda H, Kohara Y and Morishita S (2007) Reconstruction of the vertebrate ancestral genome reveals dynamic genome reorganization in early vertebrates. Genome Research 17: 1254–1265.
    O'Brien SJ, Menotti-Raymond M, Murphy WJ et al. (1999) The promise of comparative genomics in mammals. Science 286: 458–462, 479–481.
    Rascol VL, Pontarotti P and Levasseur A (2007) Ancestral animal genomes reconstruction. Current Opinion in Immunology 19(5): 542–546.

Related Sub-Topics:

Reconstruction of Phylogeny | Evolutionary Genomics | Molecular Evolution | Techniques and Tools in Molecular Biology | Evolution of Coding and Functional Modules
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Article Title: Reconstruction of Ancestral Genomes
 
How to Cite close
Stanyon, Roscoe, Garofalo, Fiorella, and Bigoni, Francesca(Mar 2008) Reconstruction of Ancestral Genomes. In: eLS. John Wiley & Sons Ltd, Chichester. http://www.els.net [doi: 10.1002/9780470015902.a0020752]