Ian Henderson from the University of Cambridge in the UK spoke at the Nanopore Community Meeting 2021 about “The genetic and epigenetic landscape of the Arabidopsis centromeres.” They referred to the centromeres as “the black holes of the genome” and explained the “centromere paradox” because of their conserved function and diverse structure. Henderson and team used Nanopore and PacBio to sequence and characterize features of centromeres in plants. Henderson also used Nanopore to map the Arabidopsis epigenome using Nanopore. The centromere repeats and invasion by ATHILA retrotransposons was studied and compared. The team will continue studying the structure of centromeres and their evolution, paying attention to repeats and recombination pathways. Henderson spoke about continuing to study access to centromeres and forms of selection.
