Human Chromosome 19 and Related Regions in Mouse: Conservative and Lineage-Specific Evolution

To illuminate the function and evolutionary history of both genomes, we sequenced mouse DNA related to human chromosome 19. Comparative sequence alignments yielded confirmatory evidence for hypothetical genes and identified exons, regulatory elements, and candidate genes that were missed by other predictive methods. Chromosome-wide comparisons revealed a difference between single-copy HSA19 genes, which are overwhelmingly conserved in mouse, and genes residing in tandem familial clusters, which differ extensively in number, coding capacity, and organization between the two species. Finally, we sequenced breakpoints of all 15 evolutionary rearrangements, providing a view of the forces that drive chromosome evolution in mammals.