centromere

Term: centromere

Origin: Anc Greek

κέντρο/centro/(center) > κεντρί/centri(=sting of a wasp)> κεντρίζω/centrizo(=stitch)

μέρος/meros (=part)

Coined:

Cyril Dean  Darlington (1901-1981)

The term introduced in 1936 by English biologist and geneticist Cyril Dean  Darlington  for the specialized chromosome region which reacts to the spindle at nuclear division and to which spindle fibers attach during cell division. Darlington studied chromosome segregation working on different plant species trying to understand why meiosis happened. Definition:

Centromere is a region that joins the two identical sister chromatids of a chromososme .

Comment

Centromere and kinetochore where considered synonyms until 1981. In 1981 Ris and Witt defined the term “kinetochore”  as the precise region on the chromososme that becomes attached to spindle and it is visible only in ultra-thin electron microscope sections. Centromere is the chromosomal region with which the kinetochore is associated (Rieder 1982).

Sourse

Emilio Battaglia. Centrmere, kinetochore, kinochore, kinetosome, kinosome, kinetomere, kinomere, kinetocentre, kinocentre: history, etymology and interpretation. Caryologia, Vol 56, no 1:1-21, 2003