{"doi":"10.1101/2021.10.18.464293","title":"Conserved chromatin and repetitive patterns reveal slow genome evolution in frogs","abstract":"Abstract Frogs are an ecologically diverse and phylogenetically ancient group of living amphibians that include important vertebrate cell and developmental model systems, notably the genus Xenopus . Here we report a high-quality reference genome sequence for the western clawed frog, Xenopus tropicalis , along with draft chromosome-scale sequences of three distantly related emerging model frog species, Eleutherodactylus coqui , Engystomops pustulosus and Hymenochirus boettgeri . Frog chromosomes have remained remarkably stable since the Mesozoic Era, with limited Robertsonian (i.e., centric) translocations and end-to-end fusions found among the smaller chromosomes. Conservation of synteny includes conservation of centromere locations, marked by centromeric tandem repeats associated with Cenp-a binding, surrounded by pericentromeric LINE/L1 elements. We explored chromosome structure across frogs, using a dense meiotic linkage map for X. tropicalis and chromatin conformation capture (HiC) data for all species. Abundant satellite repeats occupy the unusually long (∼20 megabase) terminal regions of each chromosome that coincide with high rates of recombination. Both embryonic and differentiated cells show reproducible association of centromeric chromatin, and of telomeres, reflecting a Rabl configuration similar to the “bouquet” structure of meiotic cells. Our comparative analyses reveal 13 conserved ancestral anuran chromosomes from which contemporary frog genomes were constructed.","journal":"bioRxiv (Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory)","year":2021,"id":214257,"datarank":0.5066927689669519,"base_score":2.4849066497880004,"endowment":2.4849066497880004,"self_citation_contribution":0.37273599746820013,"citation_network_contribution":0.13395677149875176,"self_endowment_contribution":0.37273599746820013,"citer_contribution":0.13395677149875176,"corpus_percentile":62.02521853484954,"corpus_rank":4910,"citation_count":11,"citer_count":7,"citers_with_citation_signal":6,"citers_with_endowment":6,"datacite_reuse_total":0,"is_dataset":true,"is_dataset_confidence":0.8464,"is_data_producer":false,"deposit_databanks":null,"is_oa":true,"file_count":0,"downloads":0,"has_version_chain":false,"published_date":"2021-01-01","fair_score":null,"fair_percentile":null,"algorithm_id":"datarank_citation_only_1hop_v6","ranking_scope":"data_only","authors":[{"id":346050,"name":"Austin B. Mudd","orcid":"0000-0003-0371-8555","position":1,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":807683,"name":"Sofía Medina-Ruiz","orcid":"0000-0002-7781-8199","position":2,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":607833,"name":"Therese Mitros","orcid":"0000-0001-6708-3988","position":3,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":564727,"name":"Owen K. Smith","orcid":"0000-0003-0880-2801","position":4,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":412238,"name":"Kelly E. Miller","orcid":"0000-0002-2273-2064","position":5,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":488862,"name":"Jessica B. Lyons","orcid":"0000-0002-3886-2146","position":6,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":4941,"name":"Sanjit Singh Batra","orcid":"0000-0001-9849-865X","position":7,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":807684,"name":"Joseph Park","orcid":"0000-0001-5664-0638","position":8,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":807685,"name":"Kodiak C. Berkoff","orcid":"0000-0002-7869-9814","position":9,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":807686,"name":"Christopher Plott","orcid":"0000-0002-0109-5174","position":10,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":252352,"name":"Jane Grimwood","orcid":"0000-0002-8356-8325","position":11,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":252353,"name":"Jeremy Schmutz","orcid":"0000-0001-8062-9172","position":12,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":807687,"name":"Guadalupe Aguirre-Figueroa","orcid":"0000-0001-8698-2065","position":13,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":345100,"name":"Mustafa K. 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Bredeson","orcid":"0000-0001-5489-8512","position":0,"is_corresponding":true}],"reference_count":167,"raw_metadata":null,"created_at":"2026-07-18T23:52:46.604690Z","pmid":null,"pmcid":null,"fwci":null,"citation_percentile":null,"influential_citations":0,"oa_status":null,"license":null,"views":0,"total_file_size_bytes":0,"version_count":0,"fair_f":null,"fair_a":null,"fair_i":null,"fair_r":null,"fair_zscore":null,"fair_rationale":null,"fair_model":null,"fair_agent_version":null,"fair_fulltext_source":null,"fair_has_llm":null,"fair_computed_at":null,"clinical_trials":[],"software_tools":[],"db_accessions":[],"linked_datasets":[],"topics":[]}