@article{Hall01022003,
author = {Hall, Sarah E. and Kettler, Gregory and Preuss, Daphne}, 
title = {Centromere Satellites From Arabidopsis Populations: Maintenance of Conserved and Variable Domains},
volume = {13}, 
number = {2}, 
pages = {195-205}, 
year = {2003}, 
doi = {10.1101/gr.593403}, 
abstract ={The rapid evolution of centromere sequences between species has led to a debate over whether centromere activity is sequence-dependent. TheArabidopsis thaliana centromere regions contain ∼20,000 copies of a 178-bp satellite repeat. Here, we analyzed satellites from 41 Arabidopsis ecotypes, providing the first broad population survey of satellite variation within a species. We found highly conserved segments and consistent sequence lengths in theArabidopsis satellites and in the published collection of human α-satellites, supporting models for a functional role. Despite this conservation, polymorphisms are significantly enriched at some sites, yielding variation that could restrict binding proteins to a subset of repeat monomers. Some satellite regions vary considerably; at certain bases, consensus sequences derived from each ecotype diverge significantly from the Arabidopsis consensus, indicating substitutions sweep through a genome in less than 5 million years. Such rapid changes generate more variation within the set ofArabidopsis satellites than in genes from the chromosome arms or from the recombinationally suppressed centromere regions. These studies highlight a balance between the mechanisms that maintain particular satellite domains and the forces that disperse sequence changes throughout the satellite repeats in the genome.[Supplemental material is available online atwww.genome.org.]}, 
URL = {http://genome.cshlp.org/content/13/2/195.abstract}, 
eprint = {http://genome.cshlp.org/content/13/2/195.full.pdf+html}, 
journal = {Genome Research} 
}