Distribuição de taxas de recombinação ao longo do cromossomo 4 de Arabidopsis thaliana e sua associação com elementos genômicos

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2010-03-29

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Universidade Federal de Goiás

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Recombination is one of the most important factors in the evolution of genome organization. It provides the links between homologous chromosomes that ensure their proper segregation during the first meiotic division. It is responsible for the creation of novel allele combinations and yields genetic diversity on which evolutionary selection can act. Double-strand DNA breaks (DSB) initiate meiotic recombination and when the 3 terminus of one of the broken strands invades the unbroken DNA molecule and primes DNA synthesis a double Holliday junction must be resolved through some alternative pathways. When homologous chromosomes exchange genetic material with each other, an event of recombination or a crossover takes place, which may be seen through chiasma. Citological, genetics, and molecular studies in many organisms have demonstrated that crossovers have a non homogeneous distribution across chromosomes, and rather concentrated in relative small DNA fragments usually called recombination hotspots. In searching for genomic features associated with recombination hotspots a model fitted to human genome data explained 42% of recombination rate variation in a 5 mega base pairs scale. Despite the fact that genomes of some plant species have been already sequenced, up to this moment, no research has been published concerning a high resolution characterization of recombination rate variation across a plant s genome. This study used OH- radical cleavage intensity estimates and sequence data of chromosome 4 of A. thaliana and population genetic data from a public set of 250 thousand SNP genotypes obtained for 362 A. thaliana accessions to: i) characterize the recombination rate and linkage disequilibrium (LD) distributions across the chromosome 4 in different scales; ii) search for recombination hotspots; iii) evaluate probable associations between sequence motifs and genomic features with recombination hotspots. The results have shown that the distribution of recombination events across chromosome 4 of A. thaliana is very concentrated: 50% to 60% of all recombination events spans in only 13% to 20% of the total length of the chromosome. Genomic features as G+C percent (G+C%) and OHradical cleavage intensity showed important associations with LD estimates in several scales. The mean OH- radical cleavage intensity and G+C% showed redundancy in correlation analysis with LD and recombination rates. Artificial strong and statistically significant correlations arose from the usage of sliding windows. DNA fragments considered as hotspots lay preferentially in the middle third of the chromosome, while those characterized for having long range LD decay are most localized in the two distal thirds of the chromosome.

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MARTINS, Adilson Santos. Distribution of recombination rates across the chromosome 4 of Arabidopsis thaliana and its association with genomic features. 2010. 141 f. Tese (Doutorado em Ciências Agrárias) - Universidade Federal de Goiás, Goiânia, 2010.