Fig. 1.

(Left) Histogram of synteny block lengths in human for N_b = 281 synteny blocks of length at least 1 Mb, fitted by an exponential distribution with mean block length L = G_bN_b = 9.6 Mb, where G_b = 2,707 Mb is the overall length of syntenic blocks. The bin size is 2.5 Mb. (Center) The same histogram superimposed with the 190 hidden synteny blocks revealed by genome rearrangement analysis, under the assumption that all hidden blocks are short, i.e., <1 Mb in length. (Right) Histogram of breakpoint region lengths in the human genome (bin size is 100 kb). Most breakpoint regions are very short, with 109 of 258 regions being <100 kb. However, there is a small number of long breakpoint regions: 17 regions are between 1 and 2.5 Mb, and 15 are <2.5 Mb (shown by a single bar at the right end). Chromosome ends can also host breakpoints, but are not included.