Department of Genetics and Genome Biology, University of Leicester, Leicester, UK.
Key Laboratory of Plant Resources Conservation and Sustainable Utilization / Guangdong Provincial Key Laboratory of Applied Botany, South China Botanical Garden, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Guangzhou, China.
Methods Mol Biol. 2023;2672:3-21. doi: 10.1007/978-1-0716-3226-0_1.
Chromosomes have been studied since the late nineteenth century in the disciplines of cytology and cytogenetics. Analyzing their numbers, features, and dynamics has been tightly linked to the technical development of preparation methods, microscopes, and chemicals to stain them, with latest continuing developments described in this volume. At the end of the twentieth and beginning of the twenty-first centuries, DNA technology, genome sequencing, and bioinformatics have revolutionized how we see, use, and analyze chromosomes. The advent of in situ hybridization has shaped our understanding of genome organization and behavior by linking molecular sequence information with the physical location along chromosomes and genomes. Microscopy is the best technique to accurately determine chromosome number. Many features of chromosomes in interphase nuclei or pairing and disjunction at meiosis, involving physical movement of chromosomes, can only be studied by microscopy. In situ hybridization is the method of choice to characterize the abundance and chromosomal distribution of repetitive sequences that make up the majority of most plant genomes. These most variable components of a genome are found to be species- and occasionally chromosome-specific and give information about evolution and phylogeny. Multicolor fluorescence hybridization and large pools of BAC or synthetic probes can paint chromosomes and we can follow them through evolution involving hybridization, polyploidization, and rearrangements, important at a time when structural variations in the genome are being increasingly recognized. This volume discusses many of the most recent developments in the field of plant cytogenetics and gives carefully compiled protocols and useful resources.
自 19 世纪后期以来，染色体一直在细胞学和细胞遗传学领域进行研究。分析它们的数量、特征和动态与准备方法、显微镜和染色化学物质的技术发展密切相关，本卷最新的持续发展情况也有描述。在 20 世纪末和 21 世纪初，DNA 技术、基因组测序和生物信息学彻底改变了我们观察、使用和分析染色体的方式。原位杂交的出现通过将分子序列信息与染色体和基因组上的物理位置联系起来，塑造了我们对基因组组织和行为的理解。显微镜是准确确定染色体数目的最佳技术。许多处于间期核中的染色体特征或减数分裂中的配对和分离，涉及染色体的物理运动，只能通过显微镜研究。原位杂交是表征重复序列丰度和染色体分布的首选方法，重复序列构成了大多数植物基因组的大部分。这些基因组中最具可变性的成分是物种特异性的，偶尔是染色体特异性的，提供了有关进化和系统发育的信息。多色荧光杂交和大量 BAC 或合成探针可以对染色体进行染色，我们可以通过涉及杂交、多倍体化和重排的进化来跟踪它们，这在结构变异越来越受到重视的时候非常重要。本卷讨论了植物细胞遗传学领域的许多最新发展，并提供了精心编写的方案和有用的资源。
