Identification of a dispersed MboI repeat family in five higher plant genomes

Abstract

Digestion of nuclear DNAs of five plants, namely Cucurbita maxima (red gourd), Trichosanthes anguina (snake gourd), Cucumis sativus (cucumber), Cajanus cajan (pigeon pea) and Phaseolus vulgaris (french bean) with the restriction endonuclease MboI yielded discrete size classes with molecular weights in the range of 0.5 to 5 kbp. The MboI digestion pattern of Cot 0.1 DNA in french bean is comparable with that of total DNA, indicating that these bands represented highly repeated DNA sequences. Cleavage of the DNAs with varying amounts of MboI indicated the dispersed nature of the repeat families. Southern hybridization studies using french bean highly repetitive DNA as a probe indicated more homology with repeats of pigeon pea and less homology with red gourd, snake gourd and cucumber repeats.