Summary
The composition of nuclear DNA in 3 Vicia species are compared. The species V. eriocarpa, V. johannis and V. melanops are from three separate subgeneric sections of Vicia and show a fourfold variation in their amounts of nuclear DNA. DNA melting experiments, buoyant density gradient analysis and Cot reassociation experiments show that the quantitiative change in nuclear DNA between the three species is achieved by changes in the amounts of both repetitive and nonrepetitive DNA sequences. It is suggested that while the increase in the repetitive fraction is achieved by the proliferation of repetitive base sequences the increase in the nonrepetitive fraction is due to the steady accretion of highly diverged base sequences resulting from mutations, deletions, insertions and base sequence rearrangements among families of repetitive sequences.
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
Similar content being viewed by others
References
Bendich, AJ, Anderson RS (1977) Characterisation of families of repeated DNA sequences from four vascular plants. Biochemistry 16:4655–4663
Britten RJ, Khone DE (1968) Repeated sequences in DNA. Science 161:529–540
Britten RJ, Graham DE, Neufeld BR (1974) Analysis of repeating DNA sequences by reassociation. In: Grossmann L, Moldave L (eds) methods in enzymology, vol 29E. Academic Press, London New York, pp 363–418
Brown DD, Wensink PC, Jordan E (1971) Purification and some characteristics of 55 DNA from Xenopus laevis. Proc Natl Acad Sci USA 68:3175–3179
Ehrlich M, Wang RYH (1981) 5-methyl cytosine in eukaryotic DNA. Science 212:1350–1357
Hutchinson J, Narayan RKJ, Rees H (1980) Constraints upon the composition of supplementary DNA. Chromosoma 78:137–145
Kemp JD, Sutton DW (1976) A chemical and physical method for determining the complete base composition of plant DNA. Biochim Biophys Acta 425:148–156
Mandel M, Marmur J (1968) Use of ultraviolet asorbance temperature profile for determining the guanine plus cytosine content of DNA. Methods Enzymol 12 (B):195–206
Martin PG, Shank R (1966) Does Vicia faba have multistranded chromosomes? Nature 211:658
Narayan RKJ, Rees H (1976) Nuclear DNA variation in Lathyrus. Chromosoma 54:141–154
Narayan RKJ (1982) Discontinuous DNA variation in the evolution of plant species. The genus Lathyrus. Evolution 36:877–891
Narayan RKJ, Durrant A (1983) DNA distribution in chromosomes of Lathyrus species. Genetica 61:47–53
Raina SN, Rees H (1983) DNA variation between and within chromosome complements of Vicia species. Heredity 51:335–346
Rees H, Narayan RKJ (1977) Evolutionary DNA variation in Lathyrus. Chromosomes Today 6:131–139
Schilkraut CL, Marmur J, Doty P (1982) Determination of the base composition of deoxyribonucleic acid from its buoyant density in CsCl. J Mol Biol 4:430–443
Seal AG, Rees H (1982) The distribution of quantitative DNA changes associated with the evolution of diploid Festuceae. Heredity 49:179–190
Thompson WF, Murray MG (1980) Sequence organisation in pea and mungbean DNA and a model for genome evolution. In: Davis DR, Hopwood DA (eds) The flant genome. The John Innes Charity, England, pp 51–54
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Additional information
Communicated by D. von Wettstein
Rights and permissions
About this article
Cite this article
Raina, S.N., Narayan, R.K.J. Changes in DNA composition in the evolution of Vicia species. Theoret. Appl. Genetics 68, 187–192 (1984). https://doi.org/10.1007/BF00252337
Received:
Accepted:
Issue Date:
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/BF00252337