Recently, Huang Zhen's research group of FNU College of Life Sciences reconstructed the evolutionary history of chromosomal rearrangements in parrots by comparing four chromosome-level assemblies of four parrot genomes, and proposed the mechanism of genome instability mediated by transposons and gene loss. The work has filled the gaps in the rapid evolution of karyotypes and sex chromosomes in parrots, and the decoded parrot genomes will lay the foundation for directional molecular breeding of parrots. Entitled “Recurrent chromosome reshuffling and the evolution of neo-sex chromosomes in parrots”, the work was published in the top international journal Nature Communications, with FNU as the first organization, Associate Professor Huang Zhen as the first author and Professor Chen Youling and Professor Xu Luohao from Southwest University as the co-corresponding authors.
Paper link: https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-022-28585-1
(Translated by Liao Danyan/ Reviewed by Xie Xiujuan)