Dissecting the mammalian genome – new insights into chromosomal evolution

A recent study aligning genomic data from eight mammalian species has provided new and detailed information on the architecture of chromosomes that are thought to comprise the karyotype of the boreoeutherian ancestor. The analyses suggest that evolutionary breakpoints are clustering in ‘hotspots’, that these regions are enriched for centromeres and that the more commonly occurring human cancer-associated breakpoints tend to co-localize with evolutionary breakpoints.