Parasitic chromosomes of plants

Beyond “the normal” set of chromosomes plants posses an additional chromosomes, so-called B-chromosomes. These are parasitic bits of genetic material that are still inherited by next generation of cells. How exactly these B-chromosomes originated and what is their molecular makeup were the questions traced by the international study which IPMB scientist were participating on.

Martis M.M., Klemme S, Banaei-Moghaddam A.M,. Blattner F.R., Macas Jiří, Schmutzer T., Scholz U., Gundlach H., Wicker T., Šimková H., Novák Petr, Neumann Pavel, Kubaláková M., Bauer E., Haseneyer G., Fuchs J., Doležel J., Stein N., Mayer K.F.X., Houben: Selfish supernumerary chromosome reveals its origin as a mosaic of host genome and organellar sequences. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America 109(33): 13343-13346, 2012
http://dx.doi.org/10.1073/pnas.1204237109