Department of Statistics, Oxford University, 1 South Parks Road, Oxford OX1 3TG, UK.
Science. 2010 Feb 12;327(5967):876-9. doi: 10.1126/science.1182363. Epub 2009 Dec 31.
Although present in both humans and chimpanzees, recombination hotspots, at which meiotic crossover events cluster, differ markedly in their genomic location between the species. We report that a 13-base pair sequence motif previously associated with the activity of 40% of human hotspots does not function in chimpanzees and is being removed by self-destructive drive in the human lineage. Multiple lines of evidence suggest that the rapidly evolving zinc-finger protein PRDM9 binds to this motif and that sequence changes in the protein may be responsible for hotspot differences between species. The involvement of PRDM9, which causes histone H3 lysine 4 trimethylation, implies that there is a common mechanism for recombination hotspots in eukaryotes but raises questions about what forces have driven such rapid change.
虽然在人类和黑猩猩中都存在，但重组热点（减数分裂交叉事件聚集的地方）在物种之间的基因组位置上有显著差异。我们报告说，以前与 40%的人类热点活动相关的 13 个碱基对序列基序在黑猩猩中不起作用，并且在人类谱系中正在被自我毁灭的驱动力所消除。多条证据表明，快速进化的锌指蛋白 PRDM9 结合到这个基序上，并且蛋白质中的序列变化可能是导致物种间热点差异的原因。PRDM9 的参与导致组蛋白 H3 赖氨酸 4 三甲基化，这意味着真核生物中的重组热点存在共同的机制，但这引发了关于是什么力量导致了如此快速的变化的问题。
