Topological mixing and irreversibility in animal chromosome evolution.

Authors

Darrin T Schultz, Arno Blümel, Dalila Destanović, Fatih Sarigol, Oleg Simakov

Published in

Science advances. Volume 12. Issue 34. Pages eadz5561. Aug 21, 2026. Epub Aug 19, 2026.

Abstract

Animal chromosome homology can persist over hundreds of millions of years, despite fusions and translocations. The frequency, pace, and impact of these changes remain unclear. We develop a multiscale manifold representation of pan-animal genome homology to compare 5821 chromosome-scale genomes across 19 phyla and 4454 species. This "evolutionary genome topology" approach simultaneously captures chromosomal and subchromosomal organization. We find that while all 406 pairwise fusions of 29 ancestral animal linkage groups have been sampled by metazoan genome diversity, the full combinatorial potential within chromosomes remains far from explored. Our approach shows that irreversible genomic changes, caused in particular by chromosomal consolidation, dissociation, and fusion-with-mixing, place clades in distinct regions of genome architecture space. Progressive accumulation of these mixed states across genomic scales contributes to the diverging paths of animal genome evolution and has a long-lasting impact on a broad range of genes, including key developmental loci.

PMID:
42616866
Bibliographic data and abstract were imported from PubMed on 20 Aug 2026.

Read full publication at:
Please sign in to see all details.

Stats

1-terrible, 9-excellent. How would you rate this publication? Sign in in to submit your rating.

Post a comment

You need to be signed in to post comments. You can sign in here.

Comments

There are no comments yet.