Abstract
Two clones, pCZTH5-8 and pCZTH12-8, were isolated from a female chicken genomic library by screening with sequences obtained from genomic libraries which had been constructed from a terminal region of a single Z chromosome of chicken utilizing laser microbeam irradiation and PCR amplification. Fluorescencein situ hybridization to the mitotic Z chromosome and the lampbrush ZW bivalent of chicken demonstrated that both the cloned sequences are located in the heterochromatic region of the Z chromosome at the end opposite to the pairing region with the W chromosome. The sequences pCZTH5-8 and pCZTH12-8 are distributed widely on both the telomeric bow-like loops (TBL) and the region I (short loops region) of the Z lampbrush chromosome. These clones, pCZTH12-8 particularly notably, hybridized also to the TBLs of lampbrush bivalents 1–4 of chicken. Both sequence are transcribed in the lampbrush stage oocytes on the Z chromosome and on other macrobivalents. The subfragment of pCZTH5-8 which hybridizes to the TBLs and the insert of pCZTH12-8 contain regions that are closely similar in sequence. The pCZTH5-8 sequence has no internal repeats and may be part of the 24-kb macrosatellite repeating unit that is evident afterNhel digestion of the genomic DNA. A cloned 24-kb unit, pFN-1, does not show significant DNA curvature, but cytosines of its CpG dinucleotides may be highly methylatedin vivo. This contrasts with the repeat sequences of the W heterochromatin which not only have highly methylated CpG but are also strongly curved. The 24-kb unit is repeated about 830 times in the diploid genome of a female chicken, suggesting that nearly the entire terminal heterochromatin on the Z chromosome consists of this macrosatellite family. Sequences of the greater part of the pCZTH5-8 are restricted to the genusGallus but the sequence of one subregion which hybridizes to TBLs is present in the genomes of the order Galliformes.
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Hori, T., Suzuki, Y., Solovei, I. et al. Characterization of DNA sequences constituting the terminal heterochromatin of the chicken Z chromosome. Chromosome Res 4, 411–426 (1996). https://doi.org/10.1007/BF02265048
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/BF02265048