Thanks, Kaia! I hope all is well with you!

Hats off to our two co-first authors, Shenghan Gao and
@koisland.bsky.social for leading the work, and many thanks to our collaborators, Shu-Cheng Chuang, Mark Loftus, PingHsun Hsieh, Miriam Konkel, Mario Ventura, and others, for making this work possible!

Our work reveals an "arms race" between centromeric sequences and proteins, with frequent mutations within the site of the kinetochore that lead to changes in genetic and epigenetic landscapes and, ultimately, rapid evolution of these critically important regions.

Finally, comparison with 6,230 centromeres assembled by the HPRC and a 4-generation pedigree (8,340 centromeres total) reveals that centromeres vary in mutation rate by >50-fold. Surprisingly, the kinetochore site is often the most rapidly mutating region in the centromere.

Additionally, we show that some centromeres have evidence of introgression from archaic hominins, with Neanderthal and Denisovan DNA enriched in a subset of centromeres from chromosomes 10 and 21.

We find that the location of the kinetochore depends on the underlying sequence and structure of the centromere, with some chromosomes having a single kinetochore location and others having multiple, distinct locations that stratify by haplotype structure.