Fig. 6: Assembly of 237 NHP centromeres reveals variation in α-satellite HOR array size, structure and composition.

a, Sequence and structure of α-satellite HOR arrays from the human (T2T-CHM13), bonobo, chimpanzee, gorilla, Bornean orangutan and Sumatran orangutan chromosome 1–5 centromeres, with the α-satellite SF indicated for each centromere. The sequence and structure of all completely assembled centromeres is shown in Supplementary Fig. XIX.66. b, Variation in the length of the α-satellite HOR arrays for NHP centromeres. Bonobo centromeres have a bimodal length distribution, with 28 chromosomes showing minicentromeres (with α-satellite HOR arrays <700 kb long); two-tailed Mann–Whitney test, *P < 0.05; NS, not significant (compared to human, *P = 0.044, P = 0.103, *P = 0.0001, P = 0.287 and *P = 0.0099 for bonobo, chimpanzee, gorilla, Bornean and Sumatran orangutans, respectively). c, Correlation between the length of the bonobo active α-satellite HOR array and the length of the CDR for the same chromosome. d, Example showing that bonobo and chimpanzee chromosome 1 centromeres are divergent in size despite being from orthologous chromosomes. e, Sequence identity heatmap between the chromosome 17 centromeres from bonobo and chimpanzee show a common origin of sequence as well as the birth of new α-satellite HORs in the chimpanzee lineage. f, Sequence identity heatmap between chromosome 5 centromeres from the Bornean and Sumatran orangutans show highly similar sequence and structure, except for one pocket of α-satellite HORs that is only present in the Bornean orangutan. For d–f, data are for haplotype 1.