Maintenance and Function of a Plant Chromosome in Human Cells

Abstract

Replication, segregation, gene expression, and inheritance are essential features of all eukaryotic chromosomes. To delineate the extent of conservation of chromosome functions between humans and plants during evolutionary history, we have generated the first human cell line containing an Arabidopsis chromosome. The Arabidopsis chromosome was mitotically stable in hybrid cells following cell division, and initially existed as a translocated chromosome. During culture, the translocated chromosomes then converted to two types of independent plant chromosomes without human DNA sequences, with reproducibility. One pair of localization signals of CENP-A, a marker of functional centromeres was detected in the Arabidopsis genomic region in independent plant chromosomes. These results suggest that the chromosome maintenance system was conserved between human and plants. Furthermore, the expression of plant endogenous genes was observed in the hybrid cells, implicating that the plant chromosomal region existed as euchromatin in a human cell background and the gene expression system is conserved between two organisms. The present study suggests that the essential chromosome functions are conserved between evolutionarily distinct organisms such as humans and plants. Systematic analyses of hybrid cells may lead to the production of a shuttle vector between animal and plant, and a platform for the genome writing.

Diatom centromeres suggest a mechanism for nuclear DNA acquisition

“…There are very few examples in eukaryotes of foreign DNA recruiting host CENH3 to maintain a chromosome. Human centromeres have previously been shown to function in mouse chromosomes (58), and in a recent example, Arabidopsis centromeric repeats were shown to recruit human CENH3 and maintain chromosomes in human cells (59). In both cases, the chromosomes maintained by foreign DNA originally derived from chimeric host-donor DNA chromosomes followed by chromosomal breakage and/or rearrangement, resulting in smaller linear chromosomes or "mini-chromosomes."…”

Autonomous xenogenic cell fusion of murine and chick skeletal muscle myoblasts

“…Artificial cell fusions can be induced by Sendai virus (Okada 1962), polyethylene glycol (PEG) (Pontecorvo 1976), or electroporation (Zimmermann & Scheurich 1981). The latest study reported human-plant hybrid cells maintaining chromosomes from both species (Wada et al 2016), indicating that xenogenic cell fusion is a powerful method to provide useful biological tools. The latest study reported human-plant hybrid cells maintaining chromosomes from both species (Wada et al 2016), indicating that xenogenic cell fusion is a powerful method to provide useful biological tools.…”

“…Using these techniques, various xenogenic hybrid cells and organisms have been developed, for example pomato (Melchers et al 1978). The latest study reported human-plant hybrid cells maintaining chromosomes from both species (Wada et al 2016), indicating that xenogenic cell fusion is a powerful method to provide useful biological tools. However, for economic mass-production of the hybrids, current fusogenic approaches are not convenient, efficient or scalable.…”

Planimal Cells: Artificial Photosynthetic Animal Cells Inspired by Endosymbiosis and Photosynthetic Animals

“…However, the first plant-animal hybrid cells survived only 6 days. Recently, human and Arabidopsis hybrid cells were generated by PEG cell fusion (Wada et al 2017).…”

“…Thus, a synthetic genome should include both nuclear and plastid genomes with an efficient design to reduce functional redundancy compared with the animal genome. Such a down-sized genome design should be possible because mRNAs from plant genes integrated into the human genome were detected in human cells, suggesting that plant genes can be transcribed using the human transcription system (Wada et al 2017). Molecular analyses of planimal cells using transcriptomic, proteomic, metabolomic and epigenetic analyses will give us new insights into the universality and specificity of molecular mechanisms between plants and animals.…”