Syntenic relationships

Regions where gene order is conserved between organisms are commonly referred to as "syntenic". Although originally this term meant "on the same chromosome", it has come to mean collinear. One of the key early genomics discoveries was that, in related organisms, even after millions of years of evolution and divergence, certain genes remain in the same order along the chromosome.

In Genome Biol. 2001; 2(11): Published online 2001 October 22. Copyright © 2001 BioMed Central Ltd (originally from Hudson et al. 2001)

A schematic representation of synteny between the human and mouse genome. Mouse map segments have been overlaid on the human genome map. Colors correspond to particular mouse chromosomes. A similar picture emerges when grass genomes (eg rice vs maize) are compared with one another.