Characterization of six cloned DNAs from Drosophila melanogaster, including one that contains the genes for rRNA

Abstract

pDm plasmids were constructed from D. melanogaster and pSC101 DNAs by a modification of the EcoR1-ligase method which insured that each hybrid molecule contained a single segment of D. melanogaster chromosomal DNA (Dm segment). The sequences in the Dm segments of six cloned pDm DNAs were mapped within the D. melanogaster polytene chromosomes by in situ hybridization, and their repetition frequencies within the Dm segment and within the genome were determined. Four of these segments consist of sequences that are confined to single chromomeric regions in the polytene chromosomes and exhibit little or no repetition. The characteristics of this group, and also two of three Dm segments analyzed earlier (Wensink et al., 1974), are inconsistent with tandem repetition models of the chromomere. By contrast, the other two Dm segments contain moderately repetitive sequences that are located in the heterochromatin. One of these appears to be a segment of the Y chromosome in which about half the sequences are nonrepetitive and half are repeated about 33 times per genome, though they are not repeated within the segment. The second contains the DNA coding for 18 and 28S rRNA.