Scientists Analyze Chromosomes 2
and 4
NHGRI-Supported Researchers Discover Largest “Gene
Deserts”; Find New Clues to Ancestral Chromosome Fusion
Event
Bethesda, Maryland — A detailed
analysis of chromosomes 2 and 4 has detected the largest “gene
deserts” known in the human genome and uncovered more
evidence that human chromosome 2 arose from the fusion
of two ancestral ape chromosomes, researchers supported
by the National Human Genome Research Institute (NHGRI),
part of the National Institutes of Health (NIH), reported
today.
In a study published in the April 7 issue of the journal
Nature, a multi-institution team, led by Washington
University School of Medicine in St Louis, described
its analysis of the high quality, reference sequence
of chromosomes 2 and 4. The sequencing work on the chromosomes
was carried out as part of the Human Genome Project
at Washington University; Broad Institute of MIT, Cambridge,
Mass.; Stanford DNA Sequencing and Technology Development
Center, Stanford, Calif.; Wellcome Trust Sanger Institute,
Hinxton, England; National Yang-Ming University, Taipei,
Taiwan; Genoscope, Evry, France; Baylor College of Medicine,
Houston; University of Washington Multimegabase Sequencing
Center, Seattle; U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) Joint
Genome Institute, Walnut Creek, Calif.; and Roswell
Park Cancer Institute, Buffalo, N.Y.
“This analysis is an impressive achievement that
will deepen our understanding of the human genome and
speed the discovery of genes related to human health
and disease. In addition, these findings provide exciting
new insights into the structure and evolution of mammalian
genomes,” said
Francis S. Collins, M.D., Ph.D., director of NHGRI,
which led the U.S. component of the Human Genome Project
along with the DOE.
Chromosome 4 has long been of interest to the medical
community because it holds the gene for Huntington’s
disease, polycystic kidney disease, a form of muscular
dystrophy and a variety of other inherited disorders.
Chromosome 2 is noteworthy for being the second largest
human chromosome, trailing only chromosome 1 in size.
It is also home to the gene with the longest known,
protein-coding sequence — a 280,000 base pair gene that
codes for a muscle protein, called titin, which is 33,000
amino acids long.
One of the central goals of the effort to analyze the
human genome is the identification of all genes, which
are generally defined as stretches of DNA that code
for particular proteins. The new analysis confirmed
the existence of 1,346 protein-coding genes on chromosome
2 and 796 protein-coding genes on chromosome 4.
As part of their examination of chromosome 4, the researchers
found what are believed to be the largest “gene deserts” yet
discovered in the human genome sequence. These regions
of the genome are called gene deserts because they are
devoid of any protein-coding genes. However, researchers
suspect such regions are important to human biology
because they have been conserved throughout the evolution
of mammals and birds, and work is now underway to figure
out their exact functions.
Humans have 23 pairs of chromosomes — one less pair
than chimpanzees, gorillas, orangutans and other great
apes. For more than two decades, researchers have thought
human chromosome 2 was produced as the result of the
fusion of two mid-sized ape chromosomes and a Seattle
group located the fusion site in 2002.
In the latest analysis, researchers searched the chromosome’s
DNA sequence for the relics of the center (centromere)
of the ape chromosome that was inactivated upon fusion
with the other ape chromosome. They subsequently identified
a 36,000 base pair stretch of DNA sequence that likely
marks the precise location of the inactived centromere.
That tract is characterized by a type of DNA duplication,
known as alpha satellite repeats, that is a hallmark
of centromeres. In addition, the tract is flanked by
an unusual abundance of another type of DNA duplication,
called a segmental duplication.
“These data raise the possibility of a new tool for
studying genome evolution. We may be able to find other
chromosomes that have disappeared over the course of
time by searching other mammals’ DNA for similar patterns
of duplication,” said Richard K. Wilson, Ph.D., director
of the Washington University School of Medicine’s Genome
Sequencing Center and senior author of the study.
In another intriguing finding, the researchers identified
a messenger RNA (mRNA) transcript from a gene on chromosome
2 that possibly may produce a protein unique to humans
and chimps. Scientists have tentative evidence that
the gene may be used to make a protein in the brain
and the testes. The team also identified “hypervariable” regions
in which genes contain variations that may lead to the
production of altered proteins unique to humans. The
functions of the altered proteins are not known, and
researchers emphasized that their findings still require “cautious
evaluation.”
In October 2004, the International Human Genome Sequencing
Consortium published its scientific description of the
finished human genome sequence in Nature. Detailed annotations
and analyses have already been published for chromosomes
5, 6, 7, 9, 10, 13, 14, 16, 19, 20, 21, 22, X and Y.
Publications describing the remaining chromosomes are
forthcoming.
The sequence of chromosomes 2 and 4, as well as the
rest of the human genome sequence, can be accessed through
the following public databases: GenBank (www.ncbi.nih.gov/Genbank)
at NIH's National Center for Biotechnology Information
(NCBI); the UCSC Genome Browser (www.genome.ucsc.edu)
at the University of California at Santa Cruz; the Ensembl
Genome Browser (www.ensembl.org) at the Wellcome Trust
Sanger Institute and the EMBL-European Bioinformatics
Institute; the DNA Data Bank of Japan (www.ddbj.nig.ac.jp);
and EMBL-Bank (www.ebi.ac.uk/embl/index.html) at EMBL’s
Nucleotide Sequence Database.
NHGRI is one of the 27 institutes and centers at NIH,
an agency of the Department of Health and Human Services.
The NHGRI Division of Extramural Research supports grants
for research and for training and career development
at sites nationwide. Additional information about NHGRI
can be found at www.genome.gov. |