[[File:Human-mouse synteny.jpg|thumb|440x440px|Synteny (in the modern sense) between human and mouse chromosomes. Colors in the human chromosomes indicate regions homologous with parts of the mouse chromosome of the same color. For instance, sequences homologous to mouse chromosome 1 are primarily on human chromosomes 1 and 2, but also 6, 8, and 18. The X chromosome is almost completely syntenic in both species.
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In classical genetics, synteny describes the physical co-localization of genetic loci on the same chromosome within an individual or species.
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In current biology, synteny more commonly refers to colinearity, i.e. conservation of blocks of order within two sets of chromosomes that are being compared with each other. These blocks are referred to as syntenic blocks.
The Encyclopædia Britannica gives the following description of synteny, using the modern definition:[ heredity (genetics) : Microevolution - Britannica Online Encyclopedia]
Etymology
Synteny is a
neologism meaning "on the same ribbon";
Ancient Greek:
, syn "along with" + ,
tainiā "band". This can be interpreted classically as "on the same chromosome", or in the modern sense of having the same order of genes on two (homologous) strings of DNA (or chromosomes).
: co-localization on a chromosome
The classical concept is related to
genetic linkage: Linkage between two loci is established by the observation of lower-than-expected recombination frequencies between them. In contrast, any loci on the same chromosome are by definition syntenic, even if their recombination frequency cannot be distinguished from unlinked loci by practical experiments. Thus, in theory, all linked loci are syntenic, but not all syntenic loci are necessarily linked. Similarly, in
genomics, the genetic loci on a chromosome are syntenic regardless of whether this relationship can be established by experimental methods such as
DNA sequencing/assembly,
genome walking, physical localization or
happy mapping.
Students of (classical) genetics employ the term synteny to describe the situation in which two genetic loci have been assigned to the same chromosome but still may be separated by a large enough distance in map units that genetic linkage has not been demonstrated.
Across evolution:
Shared synteny (also known as conserved synteny) describes preserved co-localization of genes on chromosomes of different species. During
evolution, rearrangements to the genome such as chromosome translocations may separate two loci, resulting in the loss of synteny between them. Conversely, translocations can also join two previously separate pieces of chromosomes together, resulting in a gain of synteny between loci. Stronger-than-expected shared synteny can reflect selection for functional relationships between syntenic genes, such as combinations of alleles that are advantageous when inherited together, or shared regulatory mechanisms.
In light of the more recent shift in the meaning of synteny, this conservation of gene content and linkage without preservation of order has also been termed mesosynteny.
Current concept: gene-order preservation
The term is currently (since ~2000) more commonly used to describe preservation of the precise order of genes on a chromosome passed down from a common ancestor,
despite more "old school" geneticists rejecting what they perceive as a misappopriation of the term,
preferring
collinearity instead.
The analysis of synteny in the gene order sense has several applications in genomics. Shared synteny is one of the most reliable criteria for establishing the orthology of genomic regions in different species. Additionally, exceptional conservation of synteny can reflect important functional relationships between genes. For example, the order of genes in the "hox gene", which are key determinants of the animal body plan and which interact with each other in critical ways, is essentially preserved throughout the animal kingdom.
Synteny is widely used in studying complex genomes, as comparative genomics allows the presence and possibly function of genes in a simpler, model organism to infer those in a more complex one. For example, wheat has a very large, complex genome which is difficult to study. In 1994 research from the John Innes Centre in England and the National Institute of Agrobiological Research in Japan demonstrated that the much smaller rice genome had a similar structure and gene order to that of wheat.
Synteny is also widely used in microbial genomics. In Hyphomicrobiales and Enterobacteriales, syntenic genes encode a large number of essential cell functions and represent a high level of functional relationships.
Patterns of shared synteny or synteny breaks can also be used as characters to infer the phylogenetic relationships among several species, and even to infer the genome organization of extinct ancestral species. A qualitative distinction is sometimes drawn between macrosynteny, synteny in large portions of a chromosome, and microsynteny, synteny for only a few genes at a time.
Computational detection
Shared synteny between different species can be inferred from their genomic sequences. This is typically done using a version of the MCScan algorithm, which finds syntenic blocks between species by comparing their homologous genes and looking for common patterns of collinearity on a chromosomal or
contig scale. Homologies are usually determined on the basis of high bit score BLAST hits that occur between multiple genomes. From here, dynamic programming is used to select the best scoring path of shared homologous genes between species, taking into account potential gene loss and gain which may have occurred in the species' evolutionary histories.
See also
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Ridge (biology)
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Ultra-conserved element
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Comparative genomics
External links
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ACT (Artemis Comparison Tool) — Probably the most used synteny software program used in comparative genomics.
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Comparative Maps NIH's National Library of Medicine NCBI link to Gene Homology resources, and Comparative Chromosome Maps of the Human, Mouse, and Rat.
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Graham Moore group research page - cereal genomics More information on synteny and its use in comparative cereal genomics.
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NCBI Home Page NIH's National Library of Medicine NCBI (National Center for Biotechnology Information) link to a tremendous number of resources.
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SimpleSynteny A free browser-based tool to compare and visualize microsynteny across multiple genomes for a set of genes.
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Synteny server Server for Synteny Identification and Analysis of Genome Rearrangement—the Identification of synteny and calculating reversal distances.
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PlantSyntenyViewer A web based visualisation tool allowing to navigate on genomes and visualizing the Synteny conservation among several datasets (cereals, dicotyledons, animals, a Wheat-based one...)
