Gene syntenies conserved on very large genetic distances

P. Divina¹, J. Pačes¹, and Z. Trachtulec¹

¹Center for Applied Genomics, Institute of Molecular Genetics Academy of Sciences of the Czech Republic, Videnska 1083, 142 20 Prague, Czech Republic

trachtul@biomed.cas.cz

Conserved synteny genes are homologous genes that map to the same chromosome in two or more genomes. We set up to characterize the syntenies conserved on very large genetic distances (billions of years). We used orthologous sets of genes from human, fruit fly Drosophila melanogaster, worm C. elegans and yeast S. cerevisiae and computed conserved syntenies for all pairs of organisms. As controls, we generated random genomes and counted conserved syntenies in the same way as for the real sets. We then identified combinations of chromosomes enriched for and depleted of conserved syntenies.

This work was supported by a grant No. 301/05/0738 from the Grant Agency of the Czech Republic.