{"id":244450,"date":"2026-09-24T01:22:44","date_gmt":"2026-09-24T06:22:44","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2026\/09\/ancient-genome-function-persists-despite-frequent-mutations-centromere-study-shows"},"modified":"2026-09-24T01:22:44","modified_gmt":"2026-09-24T06:22:44","slug":"ancient-genome-function-persists-despite-frequent-mutations-centromere-study-shows","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2026\/09\/ancient-genome-function-persists-despite-frequent-mutations-centromere-study-shows","title":{"rendered":"Ancient genome function persists despite frequent mutations, centromere study shows"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a class=\"aligncenter blog-photo\" href=\"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog.images\/ancient-genome-function-persists-despite-frequent-mutations-centromere-study-shows2.jpg\"><\/a><\/p>\n<p>Every time a cell divides, its chromosomes must be distributed correctly between the two daughter cells. Central to this process is the centromere, a specialized region of the chromosome. The centromere serves as the attachment site for the cellular machinery that pulls the chromosomes apart.<\/p>\n<p>Centromeres thus perform an essential function in cell division that emerged very early in eukaryotic evolution. Remarkably, although this function has been retained over almost 2 billion years of evolution, the DNA sequences underlying centromeres have evolved at an extraordinarily rapid rate. An international team led by Dr. Korbinian Schneeberger, a professor and head of the Institute of Crop Biology at HHU, has now discovered how relatively small mutations can give rise to the enormous differences between centromeres. Their paper is <a href=\"https:\/\/www.nature.com\/articles\/s41586-026-11046-w\" target=\"_blank\">published<\/a> in Nature.<\/p>\n<p>While the fundamental function of centromeres is highly conserved, their DNA sequences are not: Centromeres can differ dramatically between species and even between individuals of the same species. This apparent contradiction is known in biology as the \u201ccentromere paradox\u201d and raises the question of how a structure that has retained such an ancient function can contain DNA that changes so rapidly.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Every time a cell divides, its chromosomes must be distributed correctly between the two daughter cells. Central to this process is the centromere, a specialized region of the chromosome. The centromere serves as the attachment site for the cellular machinery that pulls the chromosomes apart. Centromeres thus perform an essential function in cell division that [\u2026]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":427,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11,385],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-244450","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-biotech-medical","category-evolution"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/244450","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/427"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=244450"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/244450\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=244450"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=244450"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=244450"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}