The cyanobacterial tRNA(Leu) (UAA) intron: evolutionary patterns in a genetic marker.

Cyanobacterial tRNA(Leu) (UAA) intron sequences from natural populations of Nostoc and other cyanobacteria were compared. Variation between the different introns was not randomly distributed but strongly restricted by the secondary and tertiary structure of the intron. Although all Nostoc sequences examined shared high similarity, differences were observed in one stem-loop. This stem-loop could be divided into two classes, both built up from two base pairing heptanucleotide repeats. Size variation was primarily caused by different numbers of repeats, but some strains also contained additional sequences in this stem-loop not following the heptanucleotide repeat motif. Several sequences showing similarity with these additional sequences were identified in the Nostoc punctiforme genome. Furthermore, the regions flanking these sequences contained the same, or similar, heptanucleotide repeats as those flanking the corresponding sequences in the intron. It is proposed that both slipped strand mispairing during replication and homologous recombination among different loci in the genome are important processes causing variation between introns.