ETH Zurich Finds 2-Part Chromosome Pairing System in Fruit Flies

3 articles · Updated · BIOENGINEER.ORG · Aug 24

Female fruit flies use satellite DNA repeats as chromosome-specific tags, while the D1 protein locks matching maternal and paternal chromosomes together during meiosis, ETH Zurich researchers reported.
Two disrupted chromosome barcode patterns made pairing unreliable and increased wrong matches, showing the repetitive sequences are functional recognition signals rather than inert “junk DNA.”
Faulty or altered satellite patterns can misdirect D1, the study found, potentially causing chromosome segregation errors that can impair fertility and genome stability.
Nature Communications published the work on June 16, offering a mechanism for long-standing chromosome recognition questions and a possible explanation for how fast-changing repetitive DNA could help drive speciation.