Local repeat sequence organization of an intergenic spacer in the chloroplast genome of Chlamydomonas reinhardtii leads to DNA expansion and sequence scrambling: a complex mode of "copy-choice replication"?

Parent-specific, randomly amplified polymorphic DNA (RAPD) markers were obtained from total genomic DNA of Chlamydomonas reinhardtii. Such parent-specific RAPD bands (genomic fingerprints) segregated uniparentally (through mt+) in a cross between a pair of polymorphic interfertile strains of Chlamydomonas (C. reinhardtii and C. minnesotti), suggesting that they originated from the chloroplast genome. Southern analysis mapped the RAPD-markers to the chloroplast genome. One of the RAPD-markers, "P2" (1.6 kb) was cloned, sequenced and was fine mapped to the 3 kb region encompassing 3' end of 23S, full 5S and intergenic region between 5S and psbA. This region seems divergent enough between the two parents, such that a specific PCR designed for a parental specific chloroplast sequence within this region, amplified a marker in that parent only and not in the other, indicating the utility of RAPD-scan for locating the genomic regions of sequence divergence. Remarkably, the RAPD-product, "P2" seems to have originated from a PCR-amplification of a much smaller (about 600 bp), but highly repeat-rich (direct and inverted) domain of the 3 kb region in a manner that yielded no linear sequence alignment with its own template sequence. The amplification yielded the same uniquely "sequence-scrambled" product, whether the template used for PCR was total cellular DNA, chloroplast DNA or a plasmid clone DNA corresponding to that region. The PCR product, a "unique" new sequence, had lost the repetitive organization of the template genome where it had originated from and perhaps represented a "complex path" of copy-choice replication.