Evidence for an ancestral alphoid domain on the long arm of human chromosome 2.

In situ hybridization, under low stringency conditions with two alphoid DNA probes (pY alpha 1 and p82H) labeled with digoxigenin-dUTP, decorated all the centromeres of the human karyotype. However, signals were also detected on the long arm of chromosome 2 at approximately q21.3-q22.1. Since it is supposed that human chromosome 2 originated by the telomeric fusion of two ancestral primate chromosomes, these findings indicate that not only the telomeric sequences, but also the ancestral centromere (or at least its alphoid sequences), have been conserved.