Swapping 11 most likely adaptive residues in rat CENP-O is insufficient to rescue centromere binding. Mouse oocytes expressing the indicated CENP-O–GFP constructs were fixed in meiosis I and stained for centromeres (CREST) and DNA (DAPI). The constructs are: mouse CENP-O, rat CENP-O, and rat CENP-O with 11 mouse-specific residues with the highest probability of having evolved under positive selection (probability ≥ 0.9; L99V, Y123C, A141V, S177R, S179W, V186A, G225R, T226C, A228T, G247N, and H261P). (A–C) Images (A) show maximum projections; scale bars, 5 μm. Graphs show CENP-O–GFP intensity at centromeres (B) or in the cytoplasm (C); for each construct, n ≥ 684 centromeres from ≥18 cells from two independent experiments. Each spot represents one cell; bars, mean intensities with standard deviation; ****P < 0.0001, ns: not significant, one-way ANOVA with Tukey’s multiple comparison test.