Bloom Kerry
Biology Department, University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, NC 27599
Mol Biol Cell. 2015 May 1;26(9):1575-7. doi: 10.1091/mbc.E14-11-1512.
The first centromere was isolated 35 years ago by Louise Clarke and John Carbon from budding yeast. They embarked on their journey with rudimentary molecular tools (by today's standards) and little knowledge of the structure of a chromosome, much less the nature of a centromere. Their discovery opened up a new field, as centromeres have now been isolated from fungi and numerous plants and animals, including mammals. Budding yeast and several other fungi have small centromeres with short, well-defined sequences, known as point centromeres, whereas regional centromeres span several kilobases up to megabases and do not seem to have DNA sequence specificity. Centromeres are at the heart of artificial chromosomes, and we have seen the birth of synthetic centromeres in budding and fission yeast and mammals. The diversity in centromeres throughout phylogeny belie conserved functions that are only beginning to be understood.
35年前，路易丝·克拉克（Louise Clarke）和约翰·卡尔本（John Carbon）从芽殖酵母中分离出了第一个着丝粒。他们凭借（以如今的标准来看）简陋的分子工具开启了研究之旅，当时对染色体结构知之甚少，更别提着丝粒的本质了。他们的发现开辟了一个新领域，因为如今已从真菌以及包括哺乳动物在内的众多动植物中分离出了着丝粒。芽殖酵母和其他几种真菌具有小型着丝粒，其序列短且明确，被称为点着丝粒，而区域着丝粒跨度达数千碱基到数百万碱基，似乎没有DNA序列特异性。着丝粒是人工染色体的核心，我们见证了芽殖酵母、裂殖酵母和哺乳动物中合成着丝粒的诞生。整个系统发育过程中着丝粒的多样性掩盖了一些才刚刚开始被理解的保守功能。
