Great apes have maintained a stable karyotype with few large-scale rearrangements; in contrast, gibbons have undergone a high rate of chromosomal rearrangements coincident with rapid centromere turnover. Here we characterize assembled centromeres in the Eastern hoolock gibbon, (HLE), finding a diverse group of transposable elements (TEs) that differ from the canonical alpha satellites found across centromeres of other apes. We find that HLE centromeres contain a CpG methylation centromere dip region, providing evidence this epigenetic feature is conserved in the absence of satellite arrays; nevertheless, we report a variety of atypical centromeric features, including protein-coding genes and mismatched replication timing.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFTelomere-to-telomere (T2T) assemblies reveal new insights into the structure and function of the previously 'invisible' parts of the genome and allow comparative analyses of complete genomes across entire clades. We present here an open collaborative effort, termed the 'Ruminant T2T Consortium' (RT2T), that aims to generate complete diploid assemblies for numerous species of the Artiodactyla suborder Ruminantia to examine chromosomal evolution in the context of natural selection and domestication of species used as livestock.
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