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Originally published as Genetics Published Articles Ahead of Print on March 31, 2005.

Genetics, Vol. 170, 793-799, June 2005, Copyright © 2005
doi:10.1534/genetics.104.039073

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The Program of Sex Chromosome Pairing in Meiosis Is Highly Conserved Across Marsupial Species

Implications for Sex Chromosome Evolution

Jesús Page*,{dagger}, Soledad Berríos*, María Teresa Parra{dagger}, Alberto Viera{dagger}, José Ángel Suja{dagger}, Ignacio Prieto{ddagger}, José Luis Barbero{ddagger}, Julio S. Rufas{dagger} and Raúl Fernández-Donoso*,1

* Programa de Genética Humana, Instituto de Ciencias Biomédicas, Facultad de Medicina, Universidad de Chile, Santiago 7, Chile
{dagger} Unidad de Biología Celular, Departamento de Biología, Universidad Autónoma de Madrid, Madrid 28049, Spain
{ddagger} Departamento de Inmunología y Oncología, Centro Nacional de Biotecnología-CSIC, Madrid 28049, Spain

1 Corresponding author: Programa de Genética Humana, Instituto de Ciencias Biomédicas, Facultad de Medicina, Universidad de Chile, Av. Independencia 1027, P.O. Box 70061, Santiago 7, Chile.
E-mail: rfernand{at}med.uchile.cl

Marsupials present a series of genetic and chromosomal features that are highly conserved in very distant species. One of these features is the absence of a homologous region between X and Y chromosomes. According to this genetic differentiation, sex chromosomes do not synapse during the first meiotic prophase in males, and a special structure, the dense plate, maintains sex chromosome association. In this report we present results on the process of meiotic sex chromosome pairing obtained from three different species, Thylamys elegans, Dromiciops gliroides, and Rhyncholestes raphanurus, representing the three orders of American marsupials. We have investigated the relationships between the axial structures organized along sex chromosomes and the formation of the dense plate. We found that in the three species the dense plate arises as a modification of sex chromosomal axial elements, but without the involvement of other meiotic axial structures, such as the cohesin axes. Considering the phylogenetic relationships among the marsupials studied here, our data reinforce the idea that the dense plate emerged early in marsupial evolution as an efficient mechanism to ensure the association of the nonhomologous sex chromosomes. This situation could have influenced the further evolution of sex chromosomes in marsupials.




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