Geneticists eye the potential of arXiv

Population biologists turn to pre-publication server to gain wider readership and rapid review of results.
excerpted 

The preprint server arXiv.org is perhaps best known as the preserve of theoretical physicists and astrophysicists. But 2008 saw an influx of submissions of unpublished manuscripts, or preprints, by condensed-matter physicists who wanted to stake claims to the fast-moving subject of iron-based superconductors called pnictides. Now the life sciences may be on the cusp of their own ‘pnictide moment’, with population geneticists leading the charge.
In the past month, leading research groups have posted to arXiv high-profile papers on the genetic history of southern Africans¹ and Europeans². Other prominent population geneticists have submitted methods-based papers to the server, which is hosted by Cornell University in Ithaca, New York. The number of biology papers on the server is still small in comparison with physical-sciences preprints (see ‘Biology opens up’), but Paul Ginsparg, a theoretical physicist at Cornell who founded arXiv in 1991 (ref. 3), welcomes what he hopes could be a sea change.
“It’s wonderful if biologists are belatedly joining the late twentieth century,” he quips. “Welcome to the party; better late than never.”
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Another attention-grabbing submission by prominent geneticists, posted on 23 July, compares genomic variation in 22 African populations to suggest an ancient genetic link between people in southern and eastern Africa¹. One of the paper’s senior authors, geneticist David Reich of Harvard Medical School in Boston, Massachusetts, publishes routinely in Nature and the Public Library of Science journals, and co-author Carlos Bustamante, of Stanford University School of Medicine in California, is a leader in the field. Reich says that first author Joseph Pickrell, also at Harvard Medical School, suggested using arXiv. Reich and the other co-authors saw no good reason not to post the manuscript there. “It could be an example of the younger generation coming in and finding this sort of thing natural,” says Ginsparg....

http://www.nature.com/news/geneticists-eye-the-potential-of-arxiv-1.11091

Proc Natl Acad Sci U S A. 2012 Jul 30. [Epub ahead of print]

Selfish supernumerary chromosome reveals its origin as a mosaic of host genome and organellar sequences.

Martis MM, Klemme S, Banaei-Moghaddam AM, Blattner FR, Macas J, Schmutzer T, Scholz U, Gundlach H, Wicker T, Simková H, Novák P, Neumann P,Kubaláková M, Bauer E, Haseneyer G, Fuchs J, Dolezel J, Stein N, Mayer KF, Houben A.

Source

Institute of Bioinformatics and Systems Biology/Munich Information Center for Protein Sequences, Helmholtz Center Munich, German Research Center for Environmental Health, 85764 Neuherberg, Germany.

Abstract

Supernumerary B chromosomes are optional additions to the basic set of A chromosomes, and occur in all eukaryotic groups. They differ from the basic complement in morphology, pairing behavior, and inheritance and are not required for normal growth and development. The current view is that B chromosomes are parasitic elements comparable to selfish DNA, like transposons. In contrast to transposons, they are autonomously inherited independent of the host genome and have their own mechanisms of mitotic or meiotic drive. Although B chromosomes were first described a century ago, little is known about their origin and molecular makeup. The widely accepted view is that they are derived from fragments of A chromosomes and/or generated in response to interspecific hybridization. Through next-generation sequencing of sorted A and B chromosomes, we show that B chromosomes of rye are rich in gene-derived sequences, allowing us to trace their origin to fragments of A chromosomes, with the largest parts corresponding to rye chromosomes 3R and 7R. Compared with A chromosomes, B chromosomes were also found to accumulate large amounts of specific repeats and insertions of organellar DNA. The origin of rye B chromosomes occurred an estimated ∼1.1-1.3 Mya, overlapping in time with the onset of the genus Secale (1.7 Mya). We propose a comprehensive model of B chromosome evolution, including its origin by recombination of several A chromosomes followed by capturing of additional A-derived and organellar sequences and amplification of B-specific repeats.

PMID:

 

22847450

 

[PubMed - as supplied by publisher]

 

McGraw-Hill Science & Technology Dictionary:

supernumerary chromosome

(¦sü·pər′nü·mə′rer·ē ′krō·mə′sōm)

(cell and molecular biology) A chromosome present in addition to the normal chromosome complement. Also known as accessory chromosome.

KevinL: have you thought about what you really were sequencing and mapping ? 
Read more: http://www.answers.com/topic/supernumerary-chromosome#ixzz22JMRmxt4