INVESTIGADORES
NIEVES Mariela
capítulos de libros
Título:
PRIMATES FROM THE INSIDE: GENOMES AND CHROMOSOMES
Autor/es:
NIEVES, MARIELA; STEINBERG, ELIANA R.; FANTINI, LUCIA; HASSEL, DIANA; BRUNO, GABRIELA A.; MUDRY, MARTA D.
Libro:
La Primatologia en Argenina I
Editorial:
SAREM
Referencias:
Lugar: Buenos Aires; Año: 2017; p. 69 - 85
Resumen:
Earlier studies on primates in Ar¬gentina were carried out in the 1980?s, and dealt with descriptions at the species level of specimens kept in zoos and animal houses. Some of the species were used as models in biomedical research because of their close relationship with humans, giving rise to basic and applied studies. Over the next 20 years, there was a noticeable leap in both methodological and theoretical development when the population level was included in the debate about the concept of species, and evolutionary relationships among them. We deepened our knowledge of chromosomal rearrangements valuable from an evolutionary point of view in Argentine species by describing heterochromatin polymorphisms ?which are distinctive characteristics for some genera?. At the same time, particular structural rearrangements were described, such as multiple sex systems, which were characterized by meiotic studies and genomic conservation analysis using Fluorescence in situ Hybridization (FISH). At the molecular genetic level, studies of variability in mitochondrial and nuclear DNA polymorphisms contributed to characterize the intra- and interspecific variability of primate species from Argentina. These qualitative studies provided an interpretation of the evolutionary process at the level of family, proposing a chromosomal phylogeny related to other taxonomic variables, among other issues. A second methodological and argumentative leap was achieved with the introduction of Comparative Genomic Hybridization (CGH), which allows analyzing how much of the genome is shared among congeneric species and on what chromosomes differences are located. Currently, our approach for studying primates allows the analysis of the structure and organization of the cell nucleus in the context of genome dynamics. Within this framework, we discuss how the evolutionary process might occur and how primate genomes might be modulated.