Genomic homology of the domestic ferret with cats and humans

Abstract

We used chromosome paints from both the domestic cat and humans to directly establish chromosomal homology between the genome of these species and the domestic ferret. The chromosome painting data indicate that the ferret has a highly conserved karyotype closer to the ancestral carnivore karyotype than that of the cat. The cat chromosome paints revealed 22 homologous autosomal regions in the ferret genome: 16 ferret chromosomes were hybridized by a single cat paint, while 3 ferret chromosomes were hybridized by two cat paints. In situ hybridization combined with banding showed that ferret Chromosome (Chr) 1 = cat A2p/C2, Chr 2 = F2/C1q, and Chr 3 = A2q/D2. Five ferret chromosomes are homologous to single arms of cat chromosomes: ferret 4 = A1q, 5 = B1q, 6 = C1p, 10 = A1p, and 12 = B1p. The human chromosome paints revealed 32 + XY homologous regions in the ferret genome: 9 ferret chromosomes were each hybridized by a single human paint, 7 by two paints, 3 by three paints. The 10 ferret chromosomes hybridized by multiple human paints produced the following associations: ferret 1 = human 19/3/21, 2 = 8q/2q, 3 = 10/7, 5 = 8/4, 8 = 15/14, 9 = 10/12/22, 11 = 20/2, 12 = 8/4, 14 = 12/22/18, 18 = 19/16. We present an index of genomic diversity, Z, based on the relative number of conserved whole chromosome and chromosome segments as a preliminary statistic for rapid comparison between species. The index of diversity between human-ferret (Z = 0. 812) is slightly less than human-cat (Z = 0.843). The homology data presented here allow us to transfer gene mapping data from both cats and humans to the ferret.

Comparative molecular cytogenetic studies in the order Carnivora: mapping chromosomal rearrangements onto the phylogenetic tree

“…However, probes derived from American mink chromosomes 3 and 14 each hybridize to three discrete bands on the human chromosome 7. Furthermore, our results demonstrate that the American mink chromosome 14 is homologous to both cat chromosome E3 and forest polecat chromosome 11 (designated as chromosome 19 in Cavagna et al, 2000). Reciprocal paint- 6.…”

“…Note that the Mandahl and Fredga (1975) nomenclature adopted here is different from that used by Hameister et al (1997). ing between human and American mink shows American mink chromosome 14 to be homologous to parts of human chromosomes 7 and 16 (Hameister et al, 1997; this study). Nevertheless, previous comparative painting with human paints failed to demonstrate any homology between human chromosome 7 and cat chromosome E3 or polecat chromosome 11 (Rettenberger et al, 1995;Wienberg et al, 1997;Cavagna et al, 2000). On the other hand, recent comparative gene mapping (Murphy et al, 2001) and cross-species painting with dog painting probes (Yang et al, 2000a) show that cat chromosome E3 contains segments homologous to human chromosome 7.…”

“…We present herein the results of hybridization of American mink chromosome-specific painting probes onto G-banded chromosomes of human, red fox, dog, cat, Japanese sable (marten), badger, least weasel, mountain weasel, European mink, striped polecat, steppe polecat, forest polecat, and a European mink × forest polecat hybrid (see Table 1 for Linnaean and common names and diploid numbers). Moreover, we have integrated these data with the published complete comparative chromosome map of humans, as well as those of the American mink (Hameister et al, 1997), harbor seal (Frönicke et al, 1997), domestic ferret (the albino form of the forest polecat [Cavagna et al, 2000]), and between dog and American mink (Graphodatsky et al, 2000). These findings provide new insights into the karyotypic relationships among the mustelids, as well as the relationships between the mustelids and representative species of other carnivore families.…”

Origins of primate chromosomes – as delineated by Zoo-FISH and alignments of human and mouse draft genome sequences

“…The next rearrangements considered were translocations (2 breaks; 1 new conserved segment), fissions (1 break; 1 new conserved segment) and finally fusions (2 breaks). As another measure of karyotypic change the genomic diversity index, Z, has been suggested (Cavagna et al, 2000). This index is computed from the number of conserved segments and the number of completely conserved chromosomes between two species analyzed by comparative chromosome painting (Cavagna et al, 2000).…”

Tropomyosin variants describe distinct functional subcellular domains in differentiated vascular smooth muscle cells

“…2A). The peptides resulting from trypsin digestion were aligned to a human protein database because of the close similarity of the ferret to the human (2,48,54). The uppermost band at 37 kDa (band 2) was matched with a 326 aa long form of Tm6, also known as isoform 2 CRA_f of the TPM1 (␣) gene (83% coverage).…”