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. 2003 Jul 7;270(1522):1331–1340. doi: 10.1098/rspb.2003.2383

Towards the delineation of the ancestral eutherian genome organization: comparative genome maps of human and the African elephant (Loxodonta africana) generated by chromosome painting.

Lutz Frönicke 1, Johannes Wienberg 1, Gary Stone 1, Lisa Adams 1, Roscoe Stanyon 1
PMCID: PMC1691379  PMID: 12965023

Abstract

This study presents a whole-genome comparison of human and a representative of the Afrotherian clade, the African elephant, generated by reciprocal Zoo-FISH. An analysis of Afrotheria genomes is of special interest, because recent DNA sequence comparisons identify them as the oldest placental mammalian clade. Complete sets of whole-chromosome specific painting probes for the African elephant and human were constructed by degenerate oligonucleotide-primed PCR amplification of flow-sorted chromosomes. Comparative genome maps are presented based on their hybridization patterns. These maps show that the elephant has a moderately rearranged chromosome complement when compared to humans. The human paint probes identified 53 evolutionary conserved segments on the 27 autosomal elephant chromosomes and the X chromosome. Reciprocal experiments with elephant probes delineated 68 conserved segments in the human genome. The comparison with a recent aardvark and elephant Zoo-FISH study delineates new chromosomal traits which link the two Afrotherian species phylogenetically. In the absence of any morphological evidence the chromosome painting data offer the first non-DNA sequence support for an Afrotherian clade. The comparative human and elephant genome maps provide new insights into the karyotype organization of the proto-afrotherian, the ancestor of extant placental mammals, which most probably consisted of 2n=46 chromosomes.

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Selected References

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