Research Article |
Corresponding author: Alexander V. Vershinin ( avershin@mcb.nsc.ru ) Academic editor: Marcelo Guerra
© 2017 Yulia A. Lipikhina, Elena V. Evtushenko, Evgeny A. Elisafenko, Alexander V. Vershinin.
This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY 4.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.
Citation:
Lipikhina YA, Evtushenko EV, Elisafenko EA, Vershinin AV (2017) Chromosomal assignment of centromere-specific histone CENH3 genes in rye (Secale cereale L.) and their phylogeny. Comparative Cytogenetics 11(4): 821-832. https://doi.org/10.3897/compcytogen.v11i4.19953
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Centromeres are essential for correct chromosome segregation during cell division and are determined by the presence of centromere-specific histone 3 (CENH3). Most of the diploid plant species, in which the structure and copy number of CENH3 genes have been determined, have this gene as a singleton; however, some cereal species in the tribe Triticeae have been found to have CENH3 in two variants. In this work, using the set of the wheat-rye addition lines we wanted to establish the chromosomal assignment of the CENH3 genes in the cultivated rye, Secale cereale (Linnaeus, 1753), in order to expand our knowledge about synteny conservation in the most important cereal species and about their chromosome evolution. To this end, we have also analyzed data in available genome sequencing databases. As a result, the αCENH3 and βCENH3 forms have been assigned to rye chromosomes 1R and 6R: specifically, the commonest variants αCENH3v1 and βCENH3v1 to chromosome 1R, and the rare variants, αCENH3v2 and probably βCENH3v2, to chromosome 6R. No other CENH3 variants have been found by analysis of the rye genome sequencing databases. Our chromosomal assignment of CENH3 in rye has been found to be the same as that in barley, suggesting that both main forms of CENH3 appeared in a Triticeae species before the barley and wheatrye lineages split.
Centromeric histone CENH3, rye, wheat-rye addition lines, barley, Triticeae
In centromeric nucleosomes, canonical histone H3 appears in the form of its centromere-specific modification denoted in plants as CENH3. The presence of this protein is by far the most distinct molecular feature of this chromosomal region. Unlike canonical histone H3, which has a conserved structure, CENH3 normally shows considerable variability across species (
Most of the diploid plant species, in which the structure and copy number of CENH3 have been determined, have this gene as a singleton. Cereal species as these are, for example, maize and rice (
It has been established by comparative RFLP (restriction fragment length polymorphism) that the rye genome shares extensive synteny with the barley and wheat genomes (
The plant material used were the bread wheat ‘Chinese Spring’ (CS) (2n=6x=42, AABBDD), the rye cultivar Imperial (2n=2x=14, RR) and wheat-rye (‘Chinese Spring’/’Imperial’) disomic addition lines involving rye chromosomes 1R–7R (
Total RNA was isolated from leaves of 12dayold seedlings using the TRI Reagent (MRC, Inc., USA) and treated by RQRNaseFree DNase (Promega, Madison, WI) according to the manufacturer’s instructions. RNA was reverse-transcribed to cDNA using a RevertAid H Minus First Strand cDNA Synthesis Kit (Thermo Fisher Scientific). The specific primers used to amplify the CENH3 gene from cDNA were:
1) 5’ATGGCCCGCACCAAGCAC3’, 5’GCATCACCAAAGCCTCC3’, to amplify the coding region of αCENH3; and
2) 5’TGGGTCGCACGAAGCAC3’, 5’TCACCAAAGCCTTCTCCCC3’, to amplify the coding region of βCENH3.
RTPCR products were purified using a Qiagen Purification Kit (Qiagen) and cloned using an InsTAclone PCR Cloning Kit (Thermo Fisher Scientific). Both strands of each of 15–20 clones of each parental variety and addition line were sequenced using an ABI 3130×1 Genetic Analyzer (Applied Biosystems Inc., CA) and an ABI BigDye Kit according to a standard protocol. Similarity searches between the CENH3 sequences and their orthologs in other species were carried out using the TBLASTN software (
Amino acids alignments were performed online using Clustal Omega (
The search for rye genomic CENH3 sequences was performed in among entries in the Sequence Read Archive (European Bioinformatics Institute, accession ID ERP001745) for sorted rye chromosomes 1R7R (
We characterize two main forms of CENH3 proteins, αCENH3 and βCENH3, and their variants, according to differences in size and amino acid substitutions. The αCENH3v1 cDNA sequence in the cultivated rye S. cereale is 501 bp in length and the associated protein consists of 166 amino acids. In S. cereale, βCENH3v1 is distinct from αCENH3v1 in that the former has several deletions in the NTT and the insertion of three nucleotides, ACC, which encode the amino acid threonine, in the HFD. Thus, βCENH3v1 has an overall length of 456 bp and encodes a protein made up by 151 amino acids. Most of the NTT amino acid sequences in αCENH3 and βCENH3 do not align well with each other, the alpha and beta forms share as low as 58% nucleotide identity of the first 60 nucleotides from the 5’end. In addition to these main forms, their much less common variants (minor, throughout) were found. The αCENH3v2 sequences were 492 bp in length each, that is, they were shorter αCENH3v1. Additionally, these two αCENH3 variants have different amino acids at some positions. Some rye accessions carry CENH3 sequences that are individually 6 bp longer than βCENH3v1 and encode two additional amino acid residues of threonine in the NTT domain (Fig.
Examples of amino acid alignments of the different variants of the main forms of CENH3 in rye S. cereale (cv. Imperial) and Triticeae species: T. urartu (KM507181, KM507184) and Ae. tauschii (KM507186). A αCENH3 B βCENH3. Asterisks are above positions with short insertions/deletions in the Nterminal tail; the position with the highest percentage of amino acid substitutions is framed.
The amino acid differences between CENH3 in rye and wheat were used for the chromosomal assignment of the CENH3 copies in S. cereale. Each of the seven wheat-rye addition lines ‘Chinese Spring’/‘Imperial’ (2n=44 (42+2R)) (
Sixteen percent of the cDNA clones of the alpha variants of ‘Imperial’ CENH3 have a 9 bp deletion and represent the minor variant, αCENH3v2, according to our classification (Fig.
Histogram showing the percentage of αCENH3-v2 and βCENH3-v1 in the cDNA clones from rye S. cereale (cv. Imperial), wheat T. aestivum (cv. Chinese Spring) and wheat-rye (1R–7R) addition lines.
The shorter, 456bp-long forms of ‘Imperial’ CENH3 DNA produce protein molecules, each containing 156 amino acids and collectively denoted as βCENH3v1 (Fig.
To confirm the chromosomal assignment of various CENH3 variants made using addition lines and to assign αCENH3v1 and βCENH3v2 to particular chromosomes, we analyzed entries in the Sequence Read Archive (European Bioinformatics Institute, accession IDERP001745) for sorted rye chromosomes 1R7R (
Additionally, two of the reads from chromosome 1R were found to contain the coding region (positions 1 through 328) of βCENH3v1 (ERX140512.1955393, ERX140512.290111): they had no 6bp insertion in the NTT domain that all βCENH3v2 normally have and they had large deletions in the NTT that delineate beta forms from alpha forms. Some sequence reads from chromosome 6R (accession ERX140517) were found to have a high nucleotide identity to the HFD in βCENH3. Because these reads contained only the most conserved region of the HFD (the last 42 amino acids) and because this region was identical between βCENH3v1 and βCENH3v2, we were unable to tell these variants from each other, however, one thing was clear: βCENH3 is located on chromosome 6R. Thus, the analysis of the Sequence Read Archive for gDNA sequences amplified from sorted rye chromosomes 1R7R assigned αCENH3v1 to chromosome 1R, the beta form of CENH3 to chromosome 6R and confirmed the addition line-based assignment of βCENH3v1 to chromosome 1R. In summary, the main forms of CENH3 (the alpha and beta forms) are located on rye chromosomes 1R and 6R, the commonest variants, αCENH3v1 and βCENH3v1, are on chromosome 1R, and the less common αCENH3v2 and probably βCENH3v2 are on chromosome 6R. It should be noted that analysis of the most recent version of the rye genome without chromosome sorting (
A high level of identity of CENH3 sequences between wheat and rye is not consistent with a wealth of plant species data that suggest considerable between-species differences in the structure of this protein (
Phylogenetic tree of the CENH3 proteins. Phylogenetic tree inferred using JTT+G models (measures distances) and bootstrapping (1000 replicates). Bootstrap values are indicated on the branches. Rye S. cereale (cv. Imperial), wheat T. aestivum (cv. Chinese Spring) and wheat-rye (1R–7R) addition lines. NCBI accessions are: αCENH3 and βCENH3 in T. urartu (KM507181, KM507184), Ae. tauschii (KM507183, KM507186), Ae. speltoides (KM507182, KM507185). The scale bar is substitutions per site.
Most of the 67 plant species with the CENH3 sequence publicly available – including those that have undergone whole-genome duplication – have this essential gene as a singleton (
The now commonly accepted viewpoint authored by
According to our results, both main forms, αCENH3v1 and βCENH3v1, are located on rye chromosome 1R. Obviously, these copies do not reside there next to each other, but are somewhat spaced. There are two facts that support this statement. First, the two-copy organization of CENH3 makes these copies very likely to end up with gene conversion events that homogenize their sequences (
Various molecular mechanisms have been proposed to explain the emergence of these spaced gene copies on the same or different chromosomes (
A comparison of the genetic maps between rye and barley shows that rye chromosome 1R and barley chromosome 1H are fully collinear (
This research was financially supported by Russian Fundamental Scientific Research Program on the project 0310-2016-0005, the Russian Foundation for Basic Research (grant 17-04-00748a). The bioinformatics analysis was undertaken with the support of the ICG SB RAS budget project VI.61.1.2.