Wells R A, Germino G G, Krishna S, Buckle V J, Reeders S T
Howard Hughes Medical Institute, Department of Internal Medicine, Yale University School of Medicine, New Haven, Connecticut 06510.
Genomics. 1990 Dec;8(4):699-704. doi: 10.1016/0888-7543(90)90257-u.
The ends (telomeres) of eukaryotic chromosomes are protected from degradation and from loss during DNA replication by buffers of simple tandem repetitive sequence. The nucleotide sequence of these telomeric arrays is fundamental to telomere function as a site for protein and ribonucleoprotein binding and varies only slightly in a wide range of organisms. We present evidence that arrays of this human telomeric sequence, TTAGGG, are present not only at the ends of human chromosomes but also at numerous interstitial sites. These interstitial loci share nucleotide sequence similarity outside the repetitive array, suggesting that they are related functionally or have evolved from a common progenitor locus.
真核生物染色体的末端（端粒）通过简单串联重复序列缓冲器来防止在DNA复制过程中发生降解和丢失。这些端粒阵列的核苷酸序列对于端粒作为蛋白质和核糖核蛋白结合位点的功能至关重要，并且在广泛的生物体中仅略有变化。我们提供的证据表明，这种人类端粒序列TTAGGG的阵列不仅存在于人类染色体的末端，也存在于许多间质位点。这些间质位点在重复阵列之外具有核苷酸序列相似性，这表明它们在功能上相关或从共同的祖先位点进化而来。
